BALLOON HELP‚Ñ¢ ... Over the past few months there have been numerous articles discussing the benefits and features of System 7. One of the newest and most exciting developments of System 7 is the Balloon Help‚Ñ¢ facility. Balloon Help‚Ñ¢ is a help system designed to provide quick, visual help for On-Screen items and controls such as; windows, menus, buttons, checkboxes etc.
A GREAT IDEA BUT ... Unfortunately such a great advancement as Balloon Help‚Ñ¢ will only benefit a small percentage of Macintosh users. This is mainly because Balloon Help‚Ñ¢ only operates on System 7 and only a small number of macintosh users have the computing power to upgrade to System 7. Another problem with Balloon Help‚Ñ¢ is the programming requirements needed for upgrade. In order for software manufacturers to add Balloon Help‚Ñ¢ to their applications they must re-write and redistribute their applications with Balloon Help‚Ñ¢ in mind.
INTRODUCING BUBBLE HELP!™ ... Bubble Help is comprised of the best features of Balloon Help™, but with much more... Most importantly, Bubble Help™ runs on both System 6.x and System 7 applications! Bubble Help™ also incorporates animated movies within bubbles, so the user can visually see a concept carried out from beginning to end. (This is especially useful for applications with tool palletes!) Further, standard Balloon Help™ allows only 255 characters of text or a single picture within each balloon, whereas Bubble Help has no text limitation and allows mixing of text and graphics as well as animated movies. Bubble Help may be added to existing applications without manufacturer’s upgrades.
FASTER! ... Balloon Help is activated by an ‘Only On’, ‘Only Off’ menu command, whereas Bubble Help is activated with user selectable activation keys. The activation keys allow the user to activate bubbles ONLY when needed rather than all the time. Balloon Help also requires the cursor to wait idle on the screen before it displays a balloon. Bubble Help, however, is capable of displaying it’s bubbles even while the cursor is moving. In fact, it is capable of displaying it’s bubbles as fast as the cursor moves.
COMPATIBILITY ... BubbleHelp is completely compatible with Balloon Help‚Ñ¢ so you can add Balloon Help to your application for System 7 compatibility and BubbleHelp‚Ñ¢ for System 6 compatibility!
DEVELOPERS - Use the HelpWorkbench‚Ñ¢ application to add HelpBubbles to your own applications
END USERS - Use Ready-Made bubble modules for top applications such as WriteNow 2.2
Additional Information...
Available BubbleModules - T/Maker's WriteNow 2.2 $10 + $2 S&H
• Bubbles attached to all Menu's, Dialog Boxes.
• Several animating bubbles
• Free upgrade to version 3.0 BubbleModule for WriteNow 3.0
Future HelpModules - Claris FileMaker Pro, MacWrite Pro, MacDraw Pro
- Microsoft Word 5.0, Excel 3.0, Works 2.0
- Aldus PageMaker 4.0
- Intuit Quicken 3.0
- WordPerfect Word Perfect
- Quark XPress
****Note - If you are interested in authoring a HelpModule for ANY commercially available product please give us a call at 213-546-5837. We will be pleased to discuss any arrangement!
