Book Review: Designing Windows 95 Help

Review: Designing Windows 95 Help

Designing Windows 95 Help
A Guide to Creating Online Documents
Mary Deaton and Cheryl L. Zubak
QUE
684 pages + CD-ROM, USD $49.99
ISBN 0-7897-0362-9

Windows Help authoring is a lot more than just adding necessary RTF codes to text and adding some graphics. Besides telling you how to create a Help file from start to finish, Designing Windows 95 Help also tells you how you should format your topics, where to place the graphics and so on - without forgetting the most important - why.

The first chapter tells you what is new in the WinHelp 4.0 environment. The book assumes you already know how to develop a (WinHelp 3.x) help file, so if you haven't done that, you should read an introductory book.

After you know the basics, the book helps you select an authoring tool with professional tips. The book itself uses Word to design the Help examples, so an authoring tool is not absolutely mandatory, but as the book says: "get thee an authoring tool".

When you are ready to get started, the book gives very detailed information about the building blocks of Help files - the topics. You learn about different types of topics, like reference and task topics. You also learn how topics should be linked together to form efficient and easy-to-use hypertext, without forgetting user interfaces, multimedia and navigation.

These 10 excellent chapters about useable system design would be themselves worth the price of this book. But Deaton and Zubak disagree. You also get step-by-step, detailed information about using Help Workshop (the new "visual" compiler), testing your help file, and integrating the help file with your application.

If you are a WinHelp author, this book is a must. It contains such a extensive coverage of WinHelp 4 authoring, that you'll miss a lot if you don't get this book. A real star buy - highly recommended!