Utilities for Embedding, Calling and Testing Help

Market overview of recommendable utilities for the embedding, context-sensitive calling, testing and quality control of online help files.

KeyHelp

Free ActiveX control to enhance the capabilities of compiled Microsoft HTML Help systems, e.g. for using popups, embedded windows, auto-sizing windows or information types.

Price: free (Freeware)

LinKit!

Allows you to link any context sensitive help or HTML file to Windows applications without the need to modify the source code. The followed approach cannot be recommended as an alternative to creating conventional help, but it is an interesting option if you have to provide domain-specific information for third party software. For example, a company could decide to use some off-the-shelf project management software and add some context sensitive instructions for employees on company-specific policies.

Price: depending on number of installations; starting at approx. €3,000

SHO Guide

Delivers step-by-step guidance directly inside the user interface of an application (requires the use of a special player software).

Price: approx. $17000

HelpBubble .NET

Implements a .NET balloon style popup help window replacement for standard .NET tooltips. It allows you to easily add balloon style popup windows to your applications with multiple lines of text, buttons, titles and hyperlinks using standard HTML tags formatting, including forms. Links can open a web site, jump into online help or launch an external application.

Price: approx. $127

Zoom Search Engine

Adds sophisticated full text search to browser based online help files and web sites.

Price: approx. $99 (professional edition); free version for up to 50 indexed topics available

H2Reg

Small utility to register MS Help 2.x Collections (Namespaces, Titles, Plug-ins, Filters) without using MSI (Microsoft Installer).

Price: approx. $100

xchm

Can be used to display CHM files on Unix systems. Cross-platform GUI front-end to chmlib (http://www.jedrea.com/chmlib/). Can display content tree, index, full text search and bookmarks.

Price: free (Open Source)

kchmviewer

CHM viewer for Unix, Mac and Windows. Does not require KDE, but can be compiled with full KDE support. May also be used to display help files written in Russian, Korean, Chinese and Arabic.

Price: free (Open Source)

If you want to see how a specific page looks in different browsers you can use a service like http://browsershots.org. If you prefer to download individual browsers for more detailed testing, here are some links to the most widespread ones:

Internet Explorer

Firefox

Opera

Safari

Chrome

Maxthon

Epiphany

Konqueror

 

 

The following tools can be used to check hyperlinks:

DRKSpider

Checks internal and external links, style sheets, images and other files of a web site or browser based help system.

Price: free (Open Source)

Xenu's Link Sleuth

Checks web sites for broken hyperlinks. Link verification is performed on links which appear in <a> tags, as well as images, frames, plug-ins, backgrounds, local image maps, style sheets, scripts and Java applets.

Price: free (Freeware)

Do you miss anything that we ought to mention? Did you find any information that is incorrect or obsolete? Please help us to keep this page up to date and let us know. Thank you.

This page was last updated 08/2010.

Keywords relating to this page: online help files - online help - tools - software - programs - utilities - calling - embedding - help call - test - testing - survey - overview - market overview - review - price - prices - costs.

 

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