Getting the Office 2007/Vista Look & Feel w/RoboHelp 6.0

[KC_in_Colorado]

I'm looking for some advice. I'm starting a new Help file project, writing Help for a desktop application written in .NET. The developer really wanted .chm Help. I've produced FlashHelp for other products at my company and convinced him to allow me to deliver FlashHelp for his kit after showing him a sample of each output type.

My question is: Any "gotchas" that I should be aware of (re: .chm vs FlashHelp)? I haven't produced a .chm in YEARS and was surprised that anyone still uses that format but my developer gave me the impression that .chm is the MS-recommended format for his development platform.

The GUI for the product I'm documenting uses some of the Office 2007-type features. So another request is to have my help look similar to Office 2007, etc. (Personally, I'm happy with the default FlashHelp skin and standard features.) I haven't studied the Help for Office 2007 products because I don't have them but am in the process of getting a test system set up so I can see what they look like.

Any advice before I get too deep into this? I saw that RoboHelp V7 advertises more support for Office 2007 and Vista. But that's primarily to allow the Help author to run RoboHelp on Vista and import from Word 2007, right? It doesn't mean there's another output style that mimics the latest and greatest Microsoft Help.... does it? Given that I just purchased RoboHelp 6 less than a year ago, I'm not anxious to ask for funding to purchase yet another upgrade if I don't really need it.

ANY advice welcome! And thank you in advance for sharing your ideas.

kc

[Peter Grainge]

The gotcha, and probably where your developer is coming from, is to some extent this is dictated by where the help sits.

Security changes mean that CHMs are the most appropriate for help sitting on a local PC and webhelp or flashhelp are most appropriate for help sitting on a server.

CHMs can be made to work on a network, as described on my site and webhelp and flashhelp can work locally but you might have trouble with links to PDFs.

I suggest you liaise with your developer and do some testing before you go too far.

On Office 2007 help Pete Lees posted something on that recently.