Ready to start documenting your end user applications and components? Then Help has arrived - HTML Help Builder makes short work of creating documentation for your applications by providing powerful tools for creating documentation both for end user application and component documentation.

Help Builder's unique approach focuses on content creation to make you more productive when creating documentation. Help Builder separates content from design by using   templates that merge topic text with customizable HTML, providing a consistent look and feel to your help file. Use Help Builder's mark-up tools to quickly insert specific markup, capture screen shots, insert images, and create cross links to other topics intuitively. Many thoughtful tools in the environment make the process so productive you will actually enjoy building documentation as you work.

If you're a developer you'll love Help Builder's one-click support for importing classes from .NET, COM and Visual FoxPro. You can also import and auto-document SQL Server 2000/2005/2008 and Visual FoxPro databases. Help Builder also integrates with Visual Studio .NET 2008/2005 and Visual FoxPro to make Help Builder available directly in your development environment. Finally, Help Builder can be automated as a COM Server as well as through a .NET interface, so you can create automated routines to populate content dynamically if you choose. You can also extend Help Builder with an Add-in interface using any .NET Language, COM or FoxPro.

When you're done creating content, generate output for HTML Help files (Version 1.0 and 2.0), plain HTML for professional display of your documentation on your Web site, and to Word 2000 or later for a printable version.

Here's what Help Builder's rich IDE looks like previewing an auto-imported .NET class.

Click on image for larger view
This form is an example of a class imported from a .NET assembly. All the information was retrieved
from the assembly meta data and XML documentation. Although this demonstrates developer
documentation end user content is just as easy to create.

Take advantage of these cool features

• Powerful HTML Help like IDE
• Focus on content creation not 'design tweaking'
• Clear separation of content and design via scripted HTML templates
• Real time preview of each topic including link jumping in the IDE
• Visual HTML editing of topics or plain text for writing efficiency - your choice
• Intuitive Markup tools for most common tasks
• Optionally use plain HTML for complex custom features
• Easy cross-linking to other topics and Web content
• Easy screen captures from within Help Builder (optionally using SnagIt)
• Generate output to Html Help 1.0 and 2.0, MS Word and plain HTML
• Easily upload your HTML documentation to your Web Site via FTP
• Html Help 2.0 Support - generates Hxs, and Merge Collections
  for VS.NET Integration along with simple deployment steps.
• Extensible: Allows custom topic types and custom fields
• Custom icon support in HTML Help files

Developer Features

• Component and developer documentation tools
• Easily format HTML, XML and Source code in your topics
• Syntax color highlighting for code: C#, VB.NET, VFP, Java, HTML and XML
• IDE Integration with VS.NET 2008/2005/2003 and Visual FoxPro
• Update Help Context Ids in your controls from Help Builder
• Update Xml Comments in .NET from Help Builder Topics
  

Component and Database Imports

• Import .NET assemblies and types
• Import COM classes and entire typelibraries
• Import SQL Server Database or individual tables
• Import Visual FoxPro classes (PRG and VCX) and Databases
• Import WSDL Web Services
• Once topics have been imported they can be further modified
  allowing addition of things like examples, notes etc.
• Two way tools in VS.NET allow you to change comments
  in source code or Help Builder and update each other.

Standards based and Extensible

• HTML Templates let you completely customize the overall design
• CSS based styling keep your design consistent
• Individual topic templates to allow customization of each topic type.
• Simple layout design is easy to customize:
  No overly complex style schemes like the MSDN docs
• ASP Style Scripting for templates: Write code to make it do what you need it to do beyond our templates. Full access to object model!
• Full COM and .NET Automation interface to the Help Builder engine and forms interface
• VS.NET and Visual FoxPro Integration samples are provided

Help Builder has been created by developers for developers so we use this tool every day to document our own components and tools. We use it for end user as well as developer documentation, for creation and archiving of internal knowledgebases, as a code depository, BLOG editor and archiver and much, much more. The content creation opportunities are endless.

So what are you waiting for? Take a test drive with our fully functional shareware version to see for yourself how productive you can be creating documentation. Download it today!

Do you need Html Help 2.0?
If you are building end user documentation we would not recommend Html Help 2.0 as your final Help target as there's no direct support for Html Help 2.0 in the operating system. Html Help 2.0 is geared for MSDN and Visual Studio .NET type developer documentation. With HTML 2.0 content you can target your help file to be displayed in the MSDN viewer or from within VS.NET either as a standalone file or merged with the MSDN/VS.NET Help content.

This page has been visited times since August 26, 1998
 Updated