Help Authoring and Help Software for Windows

HelpStudio
$449 - Innovasys

HelpStudio provides you with an effortless way to create great help systems, which means that anyone who can use a word processor or HTML editor will be comfortable authoring help with HelpStudio. HelpStudio has been carefully designed to maximize your productivity whilst not requiring any knowledge of the technical aspects of help file compilation. You get to concentrate on pure content creation, saving time and money on every project.
Find and Replace, Spell check and Hyperlink verification can be run on the entire project, ensuring that your help systems need never ship with spelling errors or broken links. Build flags (conditional content) can be used to mark content, files or table of contents nodes in order to create multiple versions of a help system (perhaps a 'Lite' and a 'Professional' version) from the same project.
The features don't stop there. Additional tools include an image editor, integrated screen capture, a unique user interface screenshot markup tool, a popup help designer and help context id mapping Add-in for Visual Basic, integrated task management, a customizable content helper library (for automating the creation of common help content) all add up to the only Help Authoring toolset you will ever need.

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QuickHelp MacOSX
$295 - Excel Software

QuickHelp is a help authoring and deployment tool. QuickHelp consists of a Builder edition for creating, formatting and linking help topics and a Viewer edition for deploying them to end-users. The help information resides in an XML file distributed with the QuickHelp Viewer. For the end-user, QuickHelp supports a table of contents, an index with automatic search field, word searches across topics, color highlighted topic text with hypertext links, formatted lists and images, tables, actions and context sensitive help from applications. For the developer, QuickHelp provides a highly productive editing environment to create, verify and maintain application help that can be deployed to Windows 98 through Vista and Mac OS X. Generate a PDF book from help system with one click.

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QuickHelp Windows
$295 - Excel Software

QuickHelp is a help authoring and deployment tool. QuickHelp consists of a Builder edition for creating, formatting and linking help topics and a Viewer edition for deploying them to end-users. The help information resides in an XML file distributed with the QuickHelp Viewer. For the end-user, QuickHelp supports a table of contents, an index with automatic search field, word searches across topics, color highlighted topic text with hypertext links, formatted lists and images, tables, actions and context sensitive help from applications. For the developer, QuickHelp provides a highly productive editing environment to create, verify and maintain application help that can be deployed to Windows 98 through Vista and Mac OS X. Generate a PDF book from help system with one click.

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Dr.Explain
$125 - Indigo Byte Systems

Dr.Explain is a help authoring tool for rapid creation of help files and user guides. Using its unique auto capture and annotation technology, developers can document their software interfaces almost hands down. When set to work, Dr.Explain parses a live application and automatically produces screenshots of its windows along with a sequence of callouts for each window control. Users only have to add some description to each callout as needed. Dr.Explain can output the results as a set of HTML pages, CHM help file or RTF document complete with screenshots, cross-references, menus and an index page. The output is accurate and professional.

Dr.Explain is ideal for software developers, ISV, micro ISV and technical writers. It handles all the complexities of help formatting and generation, allowing them to concentrate on pure writing. This saves them days that would otherwise be wasted. Dr.Explain is also great to keep help documentation in sync with software updates. Since all data is stored in a single source file, developers can easily edit or update any portion of an existing file. In doing this, they are not required to rearrange the entire help or generate a new file. Developers will also benefit from the opportunity to customize the appearance of their help file to make it match their corporate style. They can customize its visual elements, menus and page layout. On top of all this is an affordable price, which is lower than with the majority of other software documentation tools.

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Hotspot Builder
$39.95 - Divcom Software

Using screenshots in your application?s help files ensure that your program is very easy to learn. However, simple, screenshots, which just demonstrate your program working normally, are not enough. When users have problems, they prefer to avoid searching for a solution, but to instead get an answer immediately and then continue their work. Why not provide your users with that ability? How? The solution lies in using screenshots that include hotspots, which are special regions that can be clicked on by the user to display appropriate information.
Hotspot Builder is an extremely powerful application which lets you create and edit graphics files in Segmented Hyper Graphics (.SHG) format. This allows for storage of not only the graphical image, but the hotspot information as well. A .SHG file can, of course, be easily used in WinHelp (.HLP) and HTML Help (.CHM) systems. After compiling a .SHG file into a help file, the hotspots can operate as hotlinks to help topics, as pop-up links, or even as special macros.
However, Hotspot Builder is not just an editor of .SHG files; it is also a powerful tool for the creation of screenshots and for processing images. The program includes a variety of different screen capturing tools, which allow you to make efficient screenshots by capturing only the required elements?such as dialog-boxes, buttons, fields, and so on. There is no need to copy an entire window and paste it via the Windows Clipboard!
Hotspot Builder allows you to change image color-depth and also includes special features for preparing Segmented Hyper Graphics files to be used in HTML Help. The program?s straight-forward user interface, its different color schemes and internal browser for more convenient manipulation of hotspots, and its ability to be integrated with Help Development Studio (another of the Divcom Software help authoring products) make Hotspot Builder a simply indispensable member in your help authoring toolkit.
Download your FREE trial copy now!

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HyperText Studio, Help Edition
$199 - Olson Software Limited

The HyperText Studio is a WYSIWYG online Help and Web authoring tool that uses an Integrated Development Environment for visual project development. It has the same look and feel as other major Windows applications, reducing learning time. Create WinHelp, Web sites, HTML Help, and KeyHelp.
The WYSIWYG, HTML Source, ImageMap and Cascading Style Sheet editors let you create attractive and functional online Help projects and Web sites easily. Site and link management tools let you manage projects of any size effectively. Integrated site management and editor features make creating your content as simple as drag and drop.
Features include:
- Extensive support for HTML source code editing, such as code completion. The HTML Clean system lets you remove extra code in existing HTML pages created in other editors, including Microsoft Word. The HyperText Studio maintains your tags and attributes, ensuring the integrity of your data in both editors.
- Topic styles let you apply common content to multiple pages. When you make changes to the topic style's content, The HyperText Studio applies those changes automatically to all pages that use that topic style.
- Create and edit rollovers without touching any JavaScript.
- Create expanding regions in a totally WYSIWYG manner.
- Predictive linking saves development time.
- See all links into and out of a file with Link Management.
- Manage your project graphics on one tab.
- Use Find and Replace to search for and/or replace content. You can replace text with other text, or add links or keywords automatically.
- Many more features!
The HyperText Studio includes extensive tutorials to teach you how to learn and use the product effectively.

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