Table of Contents

Every Windows application must provide to the user a way of getting Help when faced with questions about the application. These days Help systems are more than just having the manual available as a file on the PC. Help systems now consist of text, sound, video and more. While this chapter cannot answer the question of what the content of your Help system should be, it will show you what is available for you to use and how to create the Help system.

Using the Help Workshop

Building a Help System

Connecting to the Internet


Using the Help Workshop

Every version of Visual Basic has had a Help compiler included with it. The Help compiler has given the developer the ability to create a Windows Help file from Rich-Text-Formatted word documents. However, in order to compile these files into a finished Help file, the developer needed to create a Project file that contained all of the information that the compiler needed to do its job.


Building a Help System

A Help system is made up of one or more document files that are created by you. Some of these files will contain the text or graphics that appear in your finished Help topics. Other files will contain the information that controls how your Help windows will look and act. In the final compile process, the Help workshop will take all of these files and turn then into a finished Help system. The best part of this process is that if you do not like any part of the finished product, you can quickly change it and recompile.

Using the Help Contents tab, the user can select an item to view and then from there, navigate from one topic to another, based on what the user needs to find out. In addition to 'topic jumping', application Help systems usually provide pop-up windows that give detailed information about a particular word, phrase or picture without actually going to another help page.


The Internet

Many of the newer applications like Microsoft Office 97 use jumps in their Help system to take the user to specific pages on the World Wide Web. When creating your Help system, you can also provide the user with a way to locate you web site or any other web site on the Internet. To make this happen, the macro ExecFile will be used. This macro will run programs that will connect to the Internet using Internet Explorer.