Designing and Planning a Help System

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Microsoft Corporation

Updated June 10, 1999

These topics cover the basics of planning and designing a help system with HTML Help.

Get an overview of what components are in a help system, and how HTML Help assists you in creating, managing, organizing, compiling, and testing help files.

• Your help system: the big picture
• Making your help system accessible

Start a help system design

Start your design by deciding how your help system will be delivered and who your audience is. Then create plans for how to organize and present your help system.

• Designing help topics
• Planning an index
• Planning a table of contents
• Making topic or Web page connections
• Designing a topic template
• Designing a style sheet

Design help

Design your help system by deciding how you want your topics to appear and how closely you want to integrate help into the program you are documenting.

• Using the Help Viewer for topics
• Designing help windows
• Designing context-sensitive help
• Designing training card help

Design for a Web site

There are special considerations to make when you design a help system for the Web. You must also plan to update and manage the Web site.

• Distributing topics over the Internet
• Registering a Web site with search engines
• Updating and managing a Web site