Windows 98 Help

Everything's going HTML these days, including the new Help system in Win 98 (although like many of the 'new' features it's not actually that new - the first version of HTML Help showed up last year). It is, however, a definite improvement on previous Windows help: the interface, the navigation tools and the contents are all easier to work with and more helpful to the beginner and the experienced Windows user alike.

The Help viewer is now a browser: with a toolbar across the top, one pane with the list of topics and subjects on the left-hand side, and the actual Help text for your chosen topic in a second pane on the right. All the books of Help available on your system are shown in the same list, which expands like an Explorer tree of folders, so you can open up the hierarchy to see the topics and subjects within them without having to jump from page to page - although you can only have one hierarchy open at a time, it's still quicker if you need to browse through several topics to find what you're looking for. See picture

There are 20 different help files in Windows 98 and HTML Help checks which Win98 components you have installed and combines all the Help files available in HTML Help format, merging the tables of contents and indexes so all the Help is in the same place. See picture

The left-hand pane has three tabs - the Contents list, the alphabetical and hierarchical Index, which can cover up to nine levels, and Search. The full-text Search covers every word in every Help topic, and you don't lose sight of the text you're currently viewing while you're checking the Index or doing a Search for more information. Handily, if you find a page via the Index, when you flip back to Contents not only is your chosen page still displayed, but the hierarchy of folders opens to show you where it belongs for future reference. Irritatingly, this doesn't work with Search. See picture

Once you've found the page you want, if you find the folder list obscures too much of the screen, use the Hide button on the toolbar to hide the list, shrinking Help down to just the information. The forward and back buttons on the toolbar work like any browser, letting you retrace your footsteps, so it's much easier to jump back to pages you consulted previously without having to remember exactly where you found them. See picture

The links between different Help pages work better than before; as you move from one page of help to another, the content doesn't come up in different sized windows in different parts of the screen and the lists of 'related topics' show up as a context menu, rather than a separate list box, making it all easier on the eyes.

HTML Help is truly context-sensitive: although this won't make much difference till there are more applications with HTML Help, it's already handy. If you open Windows Help and Alt-Tab into Word, the Windows help doesn't stay on top, obscuring your view. And as this is a browser, the format of the Help information is richer. Although it looks very similar to familiar Windows Help you'll also see fancy backgrounds, animations, checkboxes and live URLs as well as text and images. HTML Help uses Internet Explorer 4's HTML features, using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to give a consistent look and feel, as well as DHTML to add animations. There are links to helpful pages on Microsoft's Web site embedded in various topics, or you can use the Web Help button on the toolbar to explore the latest updates and suggestions from the support team. See pictures

Web Help isn't quite what you might expect, though. Even though the Help viewer can show HTML pages (its now called HTML Help, remember), it opens Internet Explorer instead, and loads the Windows 98 Update site. Currently this informs you that one of the ActiveX components on the site may be unsafe and asks you if you actually want to run the scripts on the page. We had difficulty navigating the site, but if you follow the support link, at the moment it simply takes you to the standard Microsoft support area (http://support.microsoft.com) ready to search for help and the text in the knowledge base is identical to what you already see in Help. You can preview the new-look Windows Update site and hopefully this will add more help and support links. See pictures

The Help on Win98 itself is arranged in eight main topics (Introducing Windows 98, Exploring Your Computer, Exploring the Internet, Using Windows Accessories, Printing, Managing Hardware and Software, Connecting to Networks and Using Accessibility Features), with an online book (Getting Started with Windows 98) and 15 Troubleshooting Wizards. Introducing Windows 98 has information for Win3.1 and Mac upgraders, as well as a checklist of the new features that you've just shelled out for. Probably more useful are the tips in Exploring Your Computer which have handy suggestions for making the most of the Taskbar.

Exploring the Internet is rather slim, pointing you at Internet Explorer and suggesting you install Personal Web Server, while Using Windows Accessories is handy if you've ever wondered what the Phone Dialer and other less common accessories are for (did you know about the Kodak Imaging accessory included in Win98 for annotating faxes and images?). Managing Hardware and Software includes hints on installing new programs and devices, while the Printer and Networks section gather together basic information: if you need more help than this, turn to the Troubleshooting Wizards, which are much improved. They cover Networks, Modems, Startup & Shutdown, Printing, DriveSpace 3, Memory, MS-DOS Programs, Display, DirectX, Sound, The Microsoft Network, Hardware Conflict, Dial-Up Networking, Direct Cable Connection, and PC Cards.

They cover problems more comprehensively than the 12 Troubleshooters in Windows 95 and they're much less prone to lead you down a blind alley. Microsoft says they're based on the support calls it takes from real users and certainly the information is generally more helpful. The old printing Troubleshooter asked you to print a test page immediately; not much use if you already know you can't print anything. The new Wizard starts by asking what sort of printing problem you have and has lots more options to choose from; it comes up with suggestions for you to try and then asks if these were helpful. There's usually a 'don't know' option, if you get confused and you can go backwards, jump forwards a step if the suggestion isn't relevant or start all over again. However, for some reason, both Help and the Troubleshooters rarely offer to take you straight to relevant Control Panels or to show you have to make the changes it suggests, which was often a particularly useful feature in Win95 Help. See pictures

If what you want is more detail about what's in Windows, turn to the manual. Or, if you prefer, turn to the online version of the Windows 98 Getting Started book, which is also in Help format. In the version we saw, not everything in the book has been translated into an online equivalent; Web page links aren't live and the references to other sections of the book don't take you there. The Installing Windows 98 section is presumably included for completeness, as you have to have installed Win98 to see the book. Apart from that, this is a very useful reference to the features in Win98, with more diagrams, pictures and tables than the main help section.

Split up into bite-sized chunks of information, it's all more manageable for the beginner than the same information on paper and what's more it looks very friendly with screen shots and illustrations clearly explaining basic concepts like the Taskbar. With a title like Getting Started, don't expect anything for power users though. There is a section called Advanced Issues, but that covers issues that not everyone consider advanced - like the Add Printer Wizard and 'frequently asked questions' such as 'what is the Active Desktop'. The advice on Backing Up Your Files is sensible if rather short and the Internet Setup Advice is (basically) to use the Internet Wizard and pick an ISP from the Microsoft Referral Server. The step-by-step details on converting your hard disk to FAT 32 are excellent however and include useful tips about not letting your anti-virus software recover the boot sector of your hard drive afterwards (a sure-fire way to make your disk unusable). The glossary is extensive, although the actual definitions on offer are rather short. The full-text search is much more useful here than in the main help, as most of the entries are longer and not as well indexed, so being able to search is most welcome.

As more and more applications start to use HTML Help - expect to start seeing this after the release of Win98 and much more after the release of Office 99 at the end of the year - HTML help features like the run-time merging and full-text searching will become very helpful indeed.