.HLP support discontinued in Vista

January 27, 2007 @ 4:29 am- from Maui, Hawaii

While browsing around tonight I ran into this MSDN Knowledgebase Article:

Windows Help program (WinHlp32.exe) is no longer included with Windows (Vista)

Ok, so Windows Help is getting a bit old, but why remove this old program from the distribution and instantly break thousands of applications that still rely on help files? I just did a quick check on some of the applications I run here and there are a couple that have hlp files. An old version of WinZip and WinRar are a couple as well as some of my own ancient applications that I still run. Of course I probably don't need help on any of those...

It just seems sill to remove this tool 'just for the hell of it'. Worse there’s a note in the document:

Also, third-party programs that include .hlp files are prohibited from redistributing the Windows Help program together with their products

Then the article goes on to point out that the 16 bit version continues to be available.

This makes absolutely no sense. We’ll be break 32 bit applications, but we’ll leave the 16 bit version in so 50 year old programs can continue to run. I suppose the idea is to FORCE any 32 bit applications to update to the CHM or the new ultra over-engineered and complex to design for Vista help engine.

Luckily Microsoft didn’t deem CHM obsolete as well, although CHM has been plagued by security issues because it uses IE and more recently because CHM files that were downloaded or are run over the network are pretty much blocked from displaying content unless you check a non-obvious configuration option.

The Help Team at Microsoft is certainly one of the lamest groups at Microsoft. CHM has been around for a long time and it’s never fixed the various problems with the engine itself. HTML Help 2.0 never really got going because it was so mismanaged by that team and the new Vista Help is an absolute formatting nightmare for tool builders.

Heck I haven’t even figured out how I can support the new help engine in Html Help Builder, nor do I have any great desire to do so because from a design perspective it’ll be difficult to provide the ability to preview help files… ah, a project for another day.

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# re: .HLP support discontinued in Vista
by Heather Flanagan January 27, 2007 @ 9:47 am

We've been dorking around with Vista for a while. It is fun to use but unfortunately repeatedly crashed us when using Vegas 7.0. Had to use a "previous version of windows". Anyway, I am going to a lunch and learn on Vista in a couple of weeks and will be posting a podcast on it. Anyone who wants me to send them an email when I have it posted I invite to drop me a comment. www.pugettown.com Or you could just subscribe to my RSS feed. ;)

# re: .HLP support discontinued in Vista
by Steven Black January 27, 2007 @ 10:20 am

Now don't get me started about Microsoft <s>.

# re: .HLP support discontinued in Vista
by Nicholas January 28, 2007 @ 1:12 am

I said this on Chris's blog, but when's the last time you really used an app that had a .HLP file? The latest WinRAR has an HTML help file... latest WinZip does too, I'm pretty sure. Why are you using older versions of them, anyhow?

And they didn't remove it for the hell of it, they are quoted as saying it's due to the program being quite out of date with their standard coding practices. Now, I could argue and say there's parts of Vista that are definitely "out of date" (like the font dialog) but maybe there's a technical/code reason for it, you know?

Besides, they're going to release a version of it for Vista later on, most likely through Windows Update. And with the way Vista handles problem reports, if someone has an issue with it, I'm sure they'll be informed pretty quickly on why and how to fix it.

In short, not a big deal to me, and I'm sure it won't be an issue to most customers out there. Unless, of course, they want to install Windows 3.1/95/98 applications on their brand new Vista box?

# re: .HLP support discontinued in Vista
by Rick Strahl January 28, 2007 @ 1:46 am

I agree to some extent, but this seems really arbitrary to me. But Microsoft is soooo proud of their record of backward compatibility (which if you think about it is quite impressive as you can run even old DOS applications that are 20 years old on Vista). Pulling this out probably won't inconvenience most of us developers, but it sure will impact those that are running old applications that haven't been updated in a long time and were never planned to be updated ever again most likely. Especially CUSTOM applications...

# re: .HLP support discontinued in Vista
by Brian Vander Plaats January 30, 2007 @ 8:06 am

Rick, what "non-obvious configuration option" are you referring to with CHM files? I am seeing this issue with a help file created with HTML Help Builder running off of a shared network drive.

# re: .HLP support discontinued in Vista
by Rick Strahl January 30, 2007 @ 12:54 pm

There's a checkbox that allows to unblock CHM files. I'm not sure offhand if that works with network CHM files - that's driven completely through IE security policy I believe. More info here:

http://west-wind.com/WebLog/posts/2928.aspx

# re: .HLP support discontinued in Vista
by Michael Sartain January 31, 2007 @ 1:08 pm

I still use winhlp32 a decent bit. Win32sdk.hlp, win32wh.hlp, and wfw31wh.hlp. I pop them up from the command line, they load blistering fast, don't take much in the way of resources, find what I want, then exit. Obviously it's not the end of the world, but I agree with Rick - seems arbitrary. Not like excluding this saved them much hard drive space.

# re: .HLP support discontinued in Vista
by Brian Vander Plaats February 01, 2007 @ 11:41 am

Thanks for the link Rick. Adding the regkey seems to work the best...

# DotNetSlackers: .HLP support discontinued in Vista
by DotNetSlackers Latest ASP.NET News April 19, 2007 @ 11:45 am

# re: .HLP support discontinued in Vista
by Alex May 02, 2007 @ 11:54 pm

>>.HLP support discontinued in Vista
It really doesn't matter, since there are some third parties like Help Explorer Viewer. More info here:

www.help-explorer.com/hx.php

re: .HLP support discontinued in Vista
by Arthur Manning March 23, 2008 @ 6:00 pm

I agree with you completely! Would you believe there exists a program (Noteworthy composer) that has been doing what it needs to do for years and doesn't need updating? Why force the designers to re-build their help files if they already work with the 'old' format, which I'm sure they built on the premise that Microsoft would support this format long-term.

How foolish of them to think that Microsoft wouldn't want them to re-write their help files every few years!

All the more reason to base any help system on something over which Microsoft does not have control (.html format).