hasemgod.blogg.se - Best chm reader for windows

BEST CHM READER FOR WINDOWS PDF
BEST CHM READER FOR WINDOWS MANUAL
BEST CHM READER FOR WINDOWS FULL
BEST CHM READER FOR WINDOWS SOFTWARE
BEST CHM READER FOR WINDOWS FREE

You have to put some work into (re-)organization, bookmarking, hyperlinking, searchability of the user's guide to make it useful in the program.

BEST CHM READER FOR WINDOWS PDF

Simply slapping a PDF up on screen is not great. Then online Help can wind up as a re-purposed or derived form of a book-like guide - even if the guide is never printed but only exists as PDF. Often, there's a requirement for there to be a user guide, which then drives the main documentation effort. You can embed videos, audio, link to your product page etc.ĭepending on the application, more or less online help can be extremely useful. Don't describe dialog elements (they should be self-descriptive), but how they interact with others and affect the result. Provide a task-oriented manual, lots of How-To's and sample scenarios. There's not much point in documenting dialogs and long lists of menu items anymore.

Users will turn to search, and will try different search terms / search incrementally.

BEST CHM READER FOR WINDOWS MANUAL

Users will turn to your manual when they are stuck.

(There's seems a remaining <1% of users who do read cover to cover and will point out incorrect screenshots and minor spelling mistakes)

BEST CHM READER FOR WINDOWS SOFTWARE

If your software requries reading a manual, your software sucks.

Users expect they don't need to read you manual.

User behavior has changed significantly with the advances of UI A great manual in PDF beats a mediocre one that can be downloaded directly to brain. There are some client site HTML search engines but I haven found one that's easy to useĬontent over format, write for todays usersĮven though I've bashed PDF above, I'd still claim content is more important than the final wrapper.

BEST CHM READER FOR WINDOWS FULL

The main advantage of CHM over plain HTML is the Index and Full Text Search. Whether you bundle the HTML in a CHM doesn't really matter much.

BEST CHM READER FOR WINDOWS FREE

Sharepoint Designer is free and "works just like Word" (actual quote), you'd need some setup and rules regarding styles, cross-linking etc., but it worked out. I'd go for tech writers editing HTML directly.

Bundle a decent PDF reader with your application (Install optional, of course).

PDF is a print format, not a read format.

Imagine an Aggrobat hater in acompany with a very strict IT policy

Some people react strongly negative to some products associated with PDF.

Search is terribly slow to handle in comparison to anything else.

PDF makes you choose between unreadably small and lots of scrolling.

it's page oriented, which sucks for on-screen reading.

No reason you can't generate and ship both HTML and PDF, giving the user the option. Depending on his monitor size(s) and the space needed by your application, it may not be possible for him to view the help alongside the application, which is a hinderance if he's using the doc to walk through a step-by-step procedure.Īs implied in my first paragraph, generating multiple formats is not hard if you have the right tools. Our HTML configuration also supports context-sensitive help, though we haven't implemented that yet.Ī PDF is a nice presentation of page-based documentation, but if the user wants to avoid horizontal scrolling in order to read it he has to allocate a fair bit of screen real-estate. One of our products (used in an environment without internet access) has been doing this for years and many users prefer it to the PDFs we also ship because the navigation is easier, the content lays itself out to fit the browser window, and the chunk size is smaller. chm is anyway.Īs others said, you should look into generating HTML files that you ship with your product for help. My runner up to this would have been html help, which is essentially what a.

chm for a few reasons, mainly because of its ease of updating and distributing (only 1 file). chm files? Is there another better alternative? So again, which type of help system is best? Are PDFs acceptable instead of. Whatever solution we pick has to work without an internet connection. chm files such as a table of contents and links that jump to other sections in the document. I have done some research on creating PDFs with all of the elements that are in the. chm files the really the best avenue for providing help documentation? chm creation software, which leads me to this question: Are. chm and would essentially have to invest a lot of money to continue using this. We have now been faced with some issues regarding the software we use to create the. chm files for our help documentation and have been happy with it. At my company we create Windows based desktop applications.