Society for Technical Communication—Israel Chapter

In today's PC world, Windows 95 is still the dominant operating system and Windows Help (WinHelp) the most widely-used online Help system. The maturity and acceptance of WinHelp has given Help developers many effective Help authoring tools and design techniques to work with. Unfortunately, a similar Help standard and Help authoring community have not evolved on other PC platforms, such as the Mac or UNIX.

With the coming of the Internet age and the World Wide Web (WWW) has come HTML-based documentation. HTML (soon to be named XHTML) is a cross-platform, content delivery format that has become the unifying solution to general document distribution. But standard HTML is not robust enough for effective online Help, because it lacks many of the fundamental interface components existing in WinHelp. However, that's about to change in late 1999.

Recently, several industry leading companies have developed HTML extensions to provide these missing interface components. Microsoft HTML Help, Sun JavaHelp, Oracle Help for Java, and Blue Sky WebHelp are giving Windows Help developers the tools to create WinHelp-like, but much more complex, Help systems. 

As the dominant PC software maker, Microsoft is leading the way to HTML-based Help through its Windows 98, Office 2000, Money 99, and Windows 2000 (NT) products. Help systems in these products retain the familiar WinHelp look enhanced by improved functionality through a tri-pane window design, where the navigation window is docked to the topic window. To achieve this functionality, HTML Help uses ActiveX controls and Dynamic HTML. DHTML combines the standard HTML language with JavaScript coding (for animation) and cascading style sheets (for content rendering.)

The new Microsoft HTML Help systems feature more content and graphics than in earlier WinHelp systems, but each has its own unique HTML Help functionality. Sophisticated Help systems in Money 99 and Office 2000 combine the usual Help topic pane with an Answer Wizard. The future for Help at Microsoft is in embedding Help directly into the application user interface.

For network-based application development, research studies indicate that Java has become the premier language. In support of these network applications, Sun developed JavaHelp based on the Microsoft HTML Help model. Oracle developed Oracle Help for Java to provide similar support for its applications. Adobe Acrobat files can be read on multiple platforms, but it provides more limited Help-related functionality.

Driven by global E-Commerce, the WWW may well become the largest platform for applications. In light of this, the "Help for the Web Initiative" was created as a volunteer effort to work with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to develop guidelines and standards for Web-based Help.

In summary, here is what the future holds for online Help development:

• Beginning late this year, HTML Help will start to become the dominant Help system for Windows applications.
• For now or the foreseeable future, Mac and UNIX platforms still have no clear solution for online Help.
• Although no perfect solutions currently exist for multi-platform and Internet/intranet support for online Help, JavaHelp will provide the best support for Java applications.
• As the WWW continues to grow, its applications need a platform-independent Help standard.
• To keep up with evolution of online Help, authoring skills will continue to increase in number and complexity.

Joe Welinske is President of WinWriters, a Seattle company specializing in training and publications for the Help community. WinWriters sponsors the annual WinWriters Online Help Conference in Seattle as well as conferences in Boston, Europe, and Australia. Joe has been involved with software documentation for over 15 years. He has a BS in computer engineering (U. Illinois) and a MS in instructional design (Loyola University). He is a faculty member at the University Washington in the Department of Technical Communication where he currently teaches a course in online Help. Joe co-authored Developing Online Help for Windows 95 and publishes the Online Help Journal.
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