QuickHelp

QuickHelp is a development tool for creating and deploying application help to Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, Windows 95 through XP and virtually all Linux distributions.
QuickHelp is the easiest way to create, maintain and deploy application help. Help information resides in a single XML file with QuickHelp Viewers available for Windows, Macintosh and Linux. QuickHelp has a table of contents, an index with automatic search field, word searches across topics, topics formatted with images, tables and colored text, user initiated actions, hypertext links and context sensitive help from applications.

Easy Help Authoring for Any Platform
QuickHelp is unique in its ability to manage, author and test help topics in a single tabbed window running on your platform of choice, then deploy the help system to virtually any computer. Eliminate complex HTML tag editing, cumbersome topic management and different authoring and deployment approaches for each platform.

XML Format
QuickHelp consists of a Builder for authoring help systems and a Viewer for deploying them to end-users. Help information resides in a standard XML file distributed with a native viewer executable for each platform.
Professional End-User Help
For the end-user, QuickHelp supports a table of contents, an index with automatic search field, word searches across topics, formatted images, tables and text in topics with hypertext links, live actions and context sensitive help from application menus and dialogs. From the Contents panel, the user can view, expand or collapse topics. Use the Index panel to locate topics based on index words. Forward and backward buttons navigate through recently viewed topics.

Productive Authoring
For the developer, QuickHelp provides a highly productive authoring environment that combines the Contents and Index panels with the Edit and General panels for editing the help file. The Edit panel is used to add, edit, delete or move topics within the Contents tree. Formatted text, images, tables and links between topics can be quickly added. In addition to traditional tables with bordered rows and columns, tables can present tabular data without borders or various styles of itemized lists providing infinite formatting possibilities. Each topic has fields for defining index words and context sensitive identifier strings that link topics to application menus and dialogs. The General panel has buttons to save, open, close, verify, import or export help topics.

User Initiated Actions
QuickHelp supports configurable actions like running an executable, presenting a popup message, linking to different topics based on platform, running COM methods, sending Apple Events, running a compiled AppleScript or presenting QuickTime movies. Actions can be initiated when the user clicks on words, table cells or areas of an image.

Customized Help
Topics or portions of a topic can be conditionally visible based on the current platform or other variables. Developers can parameterize topics, actions, tables and other aspects of the help system when installing or running their application. For example, a single help file can provide customized help that is tailored to different platforms or product editions.

Easier Maintenance
QuickHelp handles administrative activities like maintaining links between topics, reordering topics and locating bad links, missing indexes, tables, actions or images. Its intuitive design enables a developer to productively begin help building in minutes. At any time, the developer can exercise the same working help system that the end-user will see by simply clicking the Contents or Index tab.