Easy Help Authoring With Helpsmith

Many desktop applications and web services now provide their clients with a help file. Such a manual resolves a number of important tasks, such as explaining to users how to use a specific feature or to do anything with the program, reducing the effort spent on support service, etc. Despite a comprehensive help system is an integral part of your product, its creation is most often still not an easy job. As the help author, you should determine what help format to use, which help authoring software and other utilities to use, how to integrate the help system with your program or service and provide context-sensitive Help, and so on.

Help authoring software for professionals

The initial idea for HelpSmith was to create a quality help authoring application, that includes a professional feature set and easy-to-use user interface, and allow developers and technical writers to create professional help files and printable documents easily. HelpSmith currently supports different help formats such as CHM HTML Help, browser-based Web Help, and Printed Manual. Additionally, HelpSmith allows you to create PDF documents using a third-party PDF printer utility. The developers of this help authoring program combined an easy-to-use interface with features that makes it possible to create full-featured help files and provide documentation in different help formats. It should be pointed out that single source project can be exported into multiple output help formats, due to single-source support.

The main features of HelpSmith are a built-in word processor with spell checker (dictionaries for many languages are available) plus tools for quick creation of the Table of Contents, keyword index, and other navigation elements. HelpSmith also has support for Unicode, Dynamic Styles, Topic Templates, and Variables. There is a smart Project Merge ability that simplifies working on the same project by a team of technical writers and making translations. HelpSmith offers you an advanced way to manage image and video files and supports any widely used graphical and video formats, including MOV and SWF clips. Of course, it is also possible to integrate HTML Help and Web Help systems into your application and provide context-sensitive help documentation.

HelpSmith includes an advanced way of working with multi media files. The help authoring program automatically puts all these files into a single media repository which is saved with your help authoring project. This, in turn, gives you these benefits: you do not have to copy any media files manually (so it becomes much easier to distribute your help authoring project), and it becomes much easier to update a screenshot used in more than one help topic since you simply update the graphics in the media repository and do not have to find and edit the topics manually. Thus, the Media Repository feature is used in order to organize images and video clips into groups, which is also useful for large help files.

Our help authoring tool includes support for text variables, that are divided into system and user ones. A variable is a placeholder which can be inserted into the text of a help topic, topic template, or in the text of values. When you build your help file, the variable placeholders are replaced with their real values. This is actually useful, because you can store values which appears in many places in your help system. And when you need to update a specific value, simply update it in the manager that controls all of the variables for your help authoring project.

Writing help topics will evidently be the biggest part of work on any help authoring project. Due to a full-featured word processor with dynamic styles and topic templates feature, HelpSmith lets you concentrate on writing: you can use multiple languages, use videos and images, tables, insert hyperlinks to other topics in your help file and also links to external resources located on the Internet, add breadcrumb objects, and everything else you may need. Templates and styles are nice tools which you can use for customization of the appearance of your help system, with no need to edit each help topic manually.

Help Files created with our Help Authoring tool

HelpSmith offers many tools that allow you to quickly write professional help files and manuals with custom appearance, and easy navigation. The help authoring program has even more possibilities than those mentioned above. But let us look at the result of working with this program - help files compiled in the CHM help, Web Help (HTML), and Printed Manual output help formats.

HTML Help and Web Help systems can be linked with your app. On the HelpSmith website you'll find manuals explaining how to provide context-sensitive Help for applications written in multiple programming languages. Moreover, the product's manual contains information on integrating a Web Help system with your web application or service.

Give HelpSmith a try!

Now you have seen that HelpSmith can help you with your help authoring jobs. As a help authoring tool for easily creating high-quality help systems and documents, it lets you create a help project with NO nee to master technical aspects. You even do not have to know anything about HTML/CSS to produce nice help systems. So HelpSmith is a help authoring tool which allows you to actually concentrate on writing help topics - and to save your time and money as a result.

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