The state of Help today - Part 2
By Justin Darley. Contact us if you would like a PDF version of this article.
History of Help formats
WinHelp®
WinHelp has been released in two distinct and very different versions. WinHelp 3.1 (sometimes referred to as WinHelp 1.0) first shipped in 1990 with Windows 3.0™. Navigation in WinHelp 3.1 was purely by means of hyperlinks and a search dialog with Index and full-text search (Find) tabs. There was no table of contents - the Contents toolbar button simply took users to the main navigation topic in the Help.
Figure 1: WinHelp 3.1 contents topic
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Figure 2: WinHelp 3.1 index
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WinHelp 4 (also known as WinHelp 95 and sometimes as Classic WinHelp) shipped in 1995 with Windows 95® and Windows NT® 3.51. The most obvious change was the inclusion of an expanding table of contents.
Figure 3: WinHelp 95 table of contents
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Both versions of WinHelp were compiled from RTF files and viewed via a custom viewer:
- WinHelp.exe (Windows 3.x) or
- WinHelp32.exe (Windows 95).
Microsoft announced in 1996 that they would cease development on WinHelp and start development on HTML Help.
The WinHelp story was not quite over however. The eHelp modification known as WinHelp 2000® provided a much improved tri-pane view very similar to that described below under HTML Help.
The State of Help today Part 1 < > The State of Help today Part 3