Windows Help uses menus to organize commands and buttons to provide navigation controls for the Help file. To simplify the interface for your Help file, you might want to use menus and buttons to provide quick access to Help file features. Menus are used in almost all applications for Windows, and button bars or tool bars are commonly used as well. If your users have any experience with Windows, it’s likely they already understand how to use menus and button bars.
In addition to the standard menus and buttons, you can add custom menus, menu items, and buttons, which can run standard Help macros or external commands that you register with the Help file. You can design your Help file to change the menu and button bar when the user opens the Help file or displays certain topics during the Help session. Customizing the Help menu bar and button bar requires you to use macros.
This section introduces Help menu and button-bar customization and discusses how to use specific Help macros to make those changes. It assumes some familiarity with Help macro syntax and usage, even though this information is covered in a later chapter. Use the material in this section to get an idea of the kinds of changes you can make to Help menus and buttons. Then refer to Chapter 14, “Help Macros,” and Chapter 15, “Help Macro Reference,” for more information about using specific macros.