nYou can create new menus and menu items or modify existing menus and menu items. See Chapter 14, “Help Macros,” and Chapter 16, “The Help Project File.”Windows Help maintains upward compatibility—Help files built with Help version 3.0 are compatible with Help version 3.1, but Help files built with the version 3.1 Help compiler will not work in version 3.0 Help applications.
The basic process for developing Help files remains the same; however, the number of features has increased dramatically. You can do everything you did using version 3.0—and much more. Some of the new features in version 3.1 of Windows Help are:
nYou can create new menus and menu items or modify existing menus and menu items. See Chapter 14, “Help Macros,” and Chapter 16, “The Help Project File.”
nThe Help button bar has a new look and a new button called History. You can add your own buttons to the standard buttons, or you can modify the function of existing buttons. See Chapter 13, “Customizing the Help File,” Chapter 14, “Help Macros,” and Chapter 16, “The Help Project File.”
nThe Copy command has a dialog box that lets users select the exact text they want to copy to the Clipboard. See Chapter 1, “The Windows Help Application.”
nIn addition to the main Help window, you can define secondary windows that also display Help information. See Chapter 9, “Defining Topic Windows,” and Chapter 16, “The Help Project File.”
nYou can control the size, placement, and background color of all Help windows, both main and secondary. See Chapter 13, “Customizing the Heop File,” and Chapter 16, “The Help Project File.”
nHelp windows can have a nonscrolling region that does not move when the user scrolls information. The nonscrolling region can include the same elements as the main window. See Chapter 9, “Defining Topic Windows,” and Chapter 16, “The Help Project File.”
nHelp includes a set of macros that you can use to modify and extend the functionality of Windows Help. The Help macros can affect an entire Help file, or they can be limited to a single topic or a single hot spot within a topic. See Chapter 14, “Help Macros.”
nPop-up windows stay up until the user closes them with another action, so you can use pop-up windows for a wider variety of information with text, graphics, and hot spots. See Chapter 1, “The Windows Help Application.”
nIn addition to links between topics, you can create links to information within the same topic or to topics in other Help files. See Chapter 6, “Creating Topics,” Chapter 8, “Creating Links and Hot Spots,”and Chapter 14, “Help Macros.”
nTopics can include dynamically sized, multiple-column tables. See Chapter 7, “Formatting Topics.”
nHelp includes the Hotspot Editor application so that your Help graphics can include hot spots for pop-up windows, hypertext jumps, or macros. See Chapter 10, “Adding Graphics,” and Chapter 11, “Creating Hypergraphics.”
nHelp includes the Multi-Resolution Bitmap Compiler so that you can create graphics that display correctly on different video resolutions. See Chapter 12, “Creating Graphics for Different Display.”
nThe Help project file includes several new sections and many new options, which gives you increased control over how the Help file is created and built. See Chapter 16, “The Help Project File.”
nThe Help compiler has been rewritten for improved performance; error messages have also been revised and rewritten. See Chapter 17, “Building the Help File,” and Chapter 18, “Help Error Messages.”
nThe Help compiler supports three levels of compression. See Chapter 16, “The Help Project File.”
nTo make developing Help files easier and more efficient, Windows Help includes the Help Authoring Templates and the Help Project Editor. These additions let you use menu commands and dialog boxes to create Help files within the Windows graphical environment instead of entering Help codes in your RTF editor. See Chapter 5, “Using Help Author.”
nYou can write custom DLLs that extend Help’s functionality by including features that you want to be part of your Help system. See Chapter 14, “Help Macros,” and Chapter 20, “Writing DLLs for Windows Help.”
nYou can create an embedded window within a Help topic and use a DLL to display an object, such as an animation or a 256-color bitmap, in the window. See Chapter 20, “Writing DLLs for Windows Help.”