How to Create an HTML Help System
Creating an HTML Help system offers advantages over creating standard HTML files. For example, HTML Help gives you the ability to implement a table of contents, index and keywords for advanced hyperlinking capability. HTML Help is the standard help system for the Windows platform, but there are many available tools and uses for a help system. You can use HTML Help to create online help for a software application, to create content for a multimedia website, to program an integrated application or to provide context-sensitive help to an application.
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Instructions
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Educate yourself on what components are in a help system, and how HTML Help assists you in creating, managing, organizing, compiling and testing help files (see Resources below).
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Analyze your help system needs. Who is your audience? This will determine what type of help system you need to create. Do you need to integrate a help system with a software tool? Do you need a freestanding knowledge base, such as policies and procedures, manuals, call center and help desk support? Do you need to create E-learning course material?
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Plan a design for your topics. For example, if you choose to distribute your help system with a program, do you want to display topics in the Help Viewer or create your own frameset? Or, if you are creating a website, plan page designs and which documents will contain the HTML Help ActiveX control.
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Install and configure an HTML Help system if you don’t already have one. You can download a trial version of RoboHelp Office from Adobe and other help system developers (see Resources below).
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Get instruction from the software help system, documentation, online training or a class.
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Create HTML template files, and begin writing. You can also import existing material created in Word, Framemaker, PDF, HTML or XML into your help system.
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Plan a design for your table of contents and index. Design any secondary Help windows or modifications to the Help Viewer you want to use.
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Create a Help Project file to manage your help files, according to your software documentation.
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Tips & Warnings
Join discussion communities and forums. This is where you can ask questions and learn tips from other users. Download a free trial before you purchase an HTML software tool (see Resources below).
You need to know what you’re doing when programming a help system or you can create documentation that is unusable. But don't be afraid to ask--other users are happy to share their knowledge and experience.
