WinHelp with Vista

This section is for announcements, information and discussions relating to the help community -- for example news about events and seminars of interest, developments in help technology and so on.

Moderator: Tim Green

Post Reply
User avatar
Van Swofford
Posts: 38
Joined: Thu Feb 05, 2004 5:42 pm
Location: Brentwood, TN

WinHelp with Vista

Unread post by Van Swofford »

Hi guys,

Looks like MS has adddressed this at last: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... laylang=en

Cheers,
Van Swofford
"Half of what I say is meaningless..." -- John Lennon
"Your job is to figure out which half" -- Van Swofford
User avatar
Tim Green
Site Admin
Posts: 23156
Joined: Mon Jun 24, 2002 9:11 am
Location: Bruehl, Germany
Contact:

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Robert,

Thanks for posting the link. We're still testing this and we'd love to see feedback from users on what kind of results they get from it. Remember that you're not allowed to include this installation package in your own products -- if you decide to continue using WinHelp in Vista you must get your users to download and install this package themselves.
User avatar
Van Swofford
Posts: 38
Joined: Thu Feb 05, 2004 5:42 pm
Location: Brentwood, TN

Unread post by Van Swofford »

From the Microsoft site: "The WinHelp.exe program is a version of Windows Help designed for 16-bit .hlp files. The WinHelp.exe program will continue to be included with Windows Vista." I find it interesting that they consider WinHelp32.exe to "no longer meet Microsoft standards" because it hasn't been updated in a long time, yet they continue to include the 16 bit version of it. Go figure....

I hadn't caught the part about developers not being able to include the program in their distributions. That makes it pretty useless. I'd never want my users to have to download and install another piece of software in order to make mine work.

Cheers,
Van
"Half of what I say is meaningless..." -- John Lennon
"Your job is to figure out which half" -- Van Swofford
User avatar
Jim Huskey
Posts: 54
Joined: Tue Jan 17, 2006 4:09 pm
Location: Universal City TX
Contact:

Winhelp Download for Vista Tested

Unread post by Jim Huskey »

I tried this the day it was released. Winhelp worked with full functionality, at least on Vista Home Basic Edition. The only difference I could notice, and it may not even be meaningful, is that it seemed to take a fraction of a second longer to display help files than those called up in XP. Note that I don't use really advanced features; only hyperlinks, calls to anchors within topics, and nothing more complicated than hidden topics.

Interesting thing is that the download installs as an update, even though this isn't an "update" as such. I can find no way to uninstall the "update", short of using the Restore point feature.

I've read posts elsewhere claiming that you can replace the winhelp32.exe file in Vista with the one in XP and it will work fine, but I haven't tried that. Seems that this download does what it's supposed to do.

Good Luck to All,

Jim
User avatar
Tim Green
Site Admin
Posts: 23156
Joined: Mon Jun 24, 2002 9:11 am
Location: Bruehl, Germany
Contact:

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Jim,
I tried this the day it was released. Winhelp worked with full functionality, at least on Vista Home Basic Edition
Microsoft has surprised everyone with this one. Vista actually has full support for WinHelp, including the full WinHelp API. It's built into the operating system at the kernel level so that everything works just as it did in XP and earlier, including field level popups, application calls and even training card help. It seems that MS wasn't quite so confident that they would be able to drop WinHelp entirely... :twisted:

The "WinHelp update" is nothing more than the real winhelp32.exe file needed for Vista. It replaces the dummy version delivered with Vista that just produces the error messages when users try to open a WinHelp file. That's all there is to it. I'm not quite sure whether the XP version would work but I doubt it. Even so, this doesn't really change the situation all that much for developers because Microsoft doesn't want to permit developers to distribute the "update" with their own applications. This means that every user who wants to use WinHelp must perform the update themselves.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

Private support:
Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
User avatar
Jim Huskey
Posts: 54
Joined: Tue Jan 17, 2006 4:09 pm
Location: Universal City TX
Contact:

Converting from Winhelp to Browser-Based Help

Unread post by Jim Huskey »

Tim, thanks for the comments.

Personally, at my job, we provide software in one form for either stand-alone or network installation. We've decided to convert to Browser-based help instead of CHM because:

- Our typical user is not extremely computer-literate, usually lawyers and other legal professionals.
- Using CHM means we (or each user) must change each user machine's registry entries (or run HHReg) if our software is installed on a network. Company leadership doesn't want to do this or make our users do this.
- We don't want any security warnings, so Browser-based is fine for any network installs. It also gives us the ability to provide on-line help over the Web.
- But...for stand-alone installs, browser-based help will display a security warning from a local hard drive, so we will probably publish/ship the help with the "Enable local testing for MS Internet Explorer" box checked.
- This way, everything works fine without any warnings, except for file links. Since I only have about 10 throughout about 18 help files, I'll just work around that problem.

This may help anybody out there whose software is used for both stand-alone and network installations, and ships the same program to satisfy both conditions.

Cheers!

Jim Huskey.
Post Reply