Example: Creating Context-Sensitive Pop-up Help

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Microsoft Corporation

Updated June 10, 1999

Context-sensitive help enables a user to easily find information about a specific user interface element. Pop-up help appears in a pop-up window rather than in the Help Viewer. This example is a four-step process that explains how to create context-sensitive pop-up help.

To make context-sensitive pop-up help work, you need to create a text file for your help topics and a header (.h) file, and then include them in your project (.hhp) file.

• The text file contains all of the topics that are used for pop-up help. Each topic ID in the text file must match a symbolic ID in the header file. You can create more than one text file for topics.
• The header file lists the symbolic IDs and numeric IDs for all the dialog boxes and controls in a program. Your software development team should be able to supply a list of IDs for your header file.

The four steps of the process are as follows:

1. Create a text file for pop-up help topics.
2. Create a header file.
3. Create a [TEXT POPUPS] section in your project file.
4. Include a header file in your project file.

Notes

• Before proceeding, you may want to review some basic guidelines for creating context-sensitive help topics.
• If your help doesn't work as expected, you can troubleshoot pop-up help problems.