Accessing Help for a CD Installer

[desufi]

Hi

I'm a novice at writing Help and I need some guidance please.

I've been asked to create a Help file that can be accessed during the Installation or Upgrade of software via a CD.

The user Installing or Upgrading the software is taken through a Wizard, (standard procedure nowadays), following instructions as they go.

The Help I have written needs to pop up in a separate window beside the Wizard displaying the corresponding screen.

What do I need to do in RoboHelp, (Office X5), to get this to work, or is there programming involved in the Installer software as well.

An help would be much appreciated

Cheers

[Captiv8r]

Hi desufi and welcome to our community

If I'm understanding correctly, you are needing to create what is called Embedded Help. If this is the case, there really isn't anything in RoboHelp that will assist with that help type. Other than offering an interface to create the topic content that will display there. I stand to be corrected here, but I believe that most of what happens is done by the developer. They have to create the window that is used as well as create the links to the content you simply supply. Your content then populates their window.

Personally, I've never created that type of help before. I'm very hopeful that someone with more experience with that type of help will chime in here and either confirm what I've offered or set us all straight.

Cheers... Rick

[Pete_Lees]

Hi desufi,

At the most basic level, you and your developer just need to work together to implement context-sensitivity in your help system — so that, for example, when the end-user clicks the Help button in a page of the wizard, the appropriate help topic is displayed. The documentation accompanying RoboHelp should provide information on how to do this and, if necessary, the people here can point you to additional online resources that may help. The methods used to implement context-sensitivity vary according to the format of the help system (compiled HTML Help, browser-based WebHelp, and so on) and the programming language that the developer uses.

If you're looking for ways to embed help content in the application interface, you may want to point your developer at KeyHelp ( http://www.keyworks.net/keyhelp.htm). This provides an easy way for developers to fetch help content from a compiled HTML Help (.chm) file and embed it in their application dialogs. But I get the impression that you didn't mean this.

In any event, none of this is achievable without assistance from your developer colleagues. They have to put the hooks in place to call your help topics at the appropriate places.

Pete

[MergeThis]

Embedded help cannot be accessible if the application has not yet been installed.

My option would be to create a small, standalone wizard help, which would either appear at the root on the CD, or in a clearly marked folder on equal standing with the application folder.

The developers could even set this wizard help to launch first, at CD insertion, and then set the app's setup.exe to launch when the user gets to a certain screen in the wizard. The first wixard screen could also provide more advanced users the option to install the app wizard-less.


Good luck,
Leon