Skip to main content

Help Builder Preview Posted

Is there any developer who has to build help for their products who hasn't tried West-Wind Help Builder?



The ability to quickly create developer help from your Visual FoxPro projects and DotNet aside - this tool just makes it very easy to build help.



I've played with Robohelp (older versions) and I couldn't handle it - I don't want a Word clone to build my help file - I want a tool that looks like the help file as I'm building it and that's exactly what Help Builder does.



Plus, the integration with SnagIt rocks!



I'm especially excited about 4.40 (that Rick Strahl just posted about) though because it helps deal with posting the HTML help to non-Windows-based servers. We have recently hooked up with a hosting site that gives us pretty much unlimited storage for our files and so I've posted our help files up there. Only problem? It's linux-based so everything is case-sensitive and doesn't like \ for path modifiers. Until recently, I've had to be extra careful with my Help Builder projects - hopefully not anymore!



If you have never tried this tool, you owe it to yourself and your customers to use it!





Help Builder 4.40 Preview Update Posted - Rick Strahl's Web Log



Powered by ScribeFire.

Comments

Rick Strahl said…
Andrew, let me know how the Linux upload stuff goes. I have no easy way to test this and there's been no feedback, so if you run into any issues be sure to let me know...

Actually I put this in on the insistence of one of our customers who was uh a little adament about this - but this is really only the 2nd or third time I've heard about this...

Sometimes it pays to speak up about the 'wish list'...

Popular posts from this blog

Elevating Project Specifications with Three Insightful ChatGPT Prompts

For developers and testers, ChatGPT, the freely accessible tool from OpenAI, is game-changing. If you want to learn a new programming language, ask for samples or have it convert your existing code. This can be done in Visual Studio Code (using GitHub CoPilot) or directly in the ChatGPT app or web site.  If you’re a tester, ChatGPT can write a test spec or actual test code (if you use Jest or Cypress) based on existing code, copied and pasted into the input area. But ChatGPT can be of huge value for analysts (whether system or business) who need to validate their needs. There’s often a disconnect between developers and analysts. Analysts complain that developers don’t build what they asked for or ask too many questions. Developers complain that analysts haven’t thought of obvious things. In these situations, ChatGPT can be a great intermediary. At its worst, it forces you to think about and then discount obvious issues. At best, it clarifies the needs into documented requirements. ...

Respect

Respect is something humans give to each other through personal connection. It’s the bond that forms when we recognize something—or someone—as significant, relatable, or worthy of care. This connection doesn’t have to be limited to people. There was an  article  recently that described the differing attitudes towards AI tools such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini (formerly Bard). Some people treat them like a standard search while others form a sort of personal relationship — being courteous, saying “please” and “thank you”. Occasionally, people share extra details unrelated to their question, like, ‘I’m going to a wedding. What flower goes well with a tuxedo?’ Does an AI “care” how you respond to it? Of course not — it reflects the patterns it’s trained on. Yet our interaction shapes how these tools evolve, and that influence is something we should take seriously. Most of us have all expressed frustration when an AI “hallucinates”. Real or not, the larger issue is that we have hi...

When A Machine Starts To Care

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Arthur C. Clarke (1962)  I first used that quote when I was starting out in the tech industry. Back then, it was a way to illustrate just how fast and powerful computers had become. Querying large datasets in seconds felt magical—at least to those who didn’t build them.  Today, we’re facing something even more extraordinary. Large Language Models (LLMs) can now carry on conversations that approach human-level fluency. Clarke’s quote applies again. And just as importantly, many researchers argue that LLMs meet—or at least brush up against—the criteria of the Turing Test.  We tend to criticize LLMs for their “hallucinations,” their sometimes-confident inaccuracies. But let’s be honest: we also complain when our friends misremember facts or recount things inaccurately. This doesn’t excuse LLMs—it simply highlights that the behavior isn’t entirely alien. In some ways, it mirrors our own cognitive limits....