"Help" system revisited

[jens g.r. benthien]

OK XARA users, all your pros and cons are nice, BUT:

The Win Help System is superior to anything else you can get. It's advantage: you don't have to install resource hungry browser with a 30 meg footprint on your system and **keep it open** all the time. That means the XARA HELP is just there when you need it, even on a machine without a browser.

As fas as I remember, the XARA upgrade sells for US$ 69 and not for hundreds of US$ - a very fair offer, don't you think so? In addition, XARA is far better in programming than 99% of the rest of the packages in this area. It comes with one of the smallest footprints on the harddrive, hence the most elaborate tools I've ever seen in the Mac and Win world.

If you want an elaborate Help System embedded in Win Help, check out Rino 3D (www.rhino3D.com) - no html help system can beat this one. Excellent screenshots, hyperlinks etc, step-by-step guides - but this packages carries a totally different price tag.

Don't expect everything for free. Sit down yourself and try to write a help system...Soooo, either calm down or promise to pay a higher price! I think the developers deserve an income and revenue as well as you designers who use the tools they develop for **you**.

Believe it or not, I would even pay an extra amount for a full featured help system that includes step-by-step guides etc. Aren't you spending extra funds for plug-ins? Consider a fancy help system being a separate plug-in or module, and decide if you would pay for it. Be honest: you charge your customers for the extra little martian in the upper right corner as well!

Too bad that XARA has to hit the market with low prices, just to keep the market share. The products are far superior than any other packages on the market, but the biggies only want to pull the funds out of your pockets (yes, I mean Adobe or Corel or Macromedia).

I will support XARA, because if you only have a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail...

This is my 5 cents worth of comment.

jens g.r. benthien
creative director
Genesis II Networks, LLC
Charlotte, NC 28208

[tonylondon]

I just want to state my view that the use of HTML help as used by Photoshop and Macromedia is a backward step. Xara please don't change!
Tony

[Soquili]

Hello everyone,

It looks like everyone has an opinion about help systems. I of course have mine, so I'll share it.

There is a way to have context sensitive help and html help in one package. Microsoft released their html help system about three years ago. They were a little dissatisfied with the old WinHelp system themselves.

If the programmers at Xara Ltd. are interested, they can download the Html Help workshop from the following URL
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/to...p/download.htm

It includes a nice program that can convert an existing WinHelp to HtmlHelp.

Of course, there would be some changes to the program code to implement the htmlhelp verses the winhelp.

I hope this doesn't delay the CD release of Xara X. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

[ED]

If a picture is worth a thousand words then a movie with sound is worth a million words.

A Help system is supposed to help by answering the question HOW. How do I..... [fill in whatever is missing here]

Some packages (unlike Xara) just don't get it. I've seen thousands of them. They tell you "what" this and that is but do little about "how" to use it. So you end up with a massive, cluttered Help System that is 5% "how" and the other 95% useless "what" information. Now your stuck with looking for the remaining useful 5% in a vast wasteland of "what" this and that does. I'm thinking needle in hay stack here, are you to? These type of "help?" systems are TOTALLY USELESS!!

Keep up the good work Xara with your Context Sensitive MULTIMEDIA Help by maximizing the WinHelp system. It just does not get any better than this at any cost! For those of you who have not yet experiences this, your in for a big surprise. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

.... stepping down from podium now ....

The BEST is good enough!

[This message was edited by ED on December 10, 2000 at 08:10 AM.]

[Soquili]

Ed, I fully agree with you. Being very new to Xara and to graphics programs in general, I downloaded the Movies for CorelXara. They are better than any help system. I also downloaded all the tutorials Gary Priester has made for CorelXara and Xara X. Using them together is far superior to trying to use WinHelp or HTML help systems.

I mentioned the HtmlHelp system merely as an alternative/inhancement to using the older WinHelp.

[img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

[Klaus Nordby]

Yes, I totally agree with Ed here: Xara's movies are great! And I've never claimed that Xara's Help is bad in terms of the information, it's VERY good. It's the WinHelp system I cannot stand.


K

[Mick Robinson]

One reason why we've stuck with the WinHelp system is that it's suitable for all versions of Windows. HTMLHelp (Microsoft's single-file help system) requires parts of IE to work. That's fine on W98 and W2000 which have in-built support but not for W95. We didn't want to bundle a chunk of IE with the download and so make it bigger.