Microsoft Office 2000/Visual Basic Programmer's Guide

Deploying HTML Help

You can deploy the files that make up your HTML Help online Help system in any of the following ways:

• As a set of HTML files compiled into one or more locally installed compiled HTML Help files (.chm)
  
  
• As a set of locally installed HTML files to be accessed through the Windows file system
  
  
• As a set of HTML files to be accessed through an intranet, an extranet, or the Internet
  
  
• A combination of these formats

The advantage of using compiled HTML Help files is that you can install a single file or small set of files on each user's local drive that can be accessed without a network connection. Additionally, compiled HTML Help files use disk space much more efficiently than uncompiled HTML files, particularly on hard disks that have been formatted with the FAT file system. For this reason, using locally installed HTML files is not generally recommended unless you want to be able to access your HTML files from outside your HTML Help online Help system.

The advantage of supplying the Help topics as a Web site is that you can update and add new Help topics from a single central location; however, providing Help this way requires that users have network access to your Web site. Moreover, certain features of HTML Help, such as full-text search, are available only when you are using compiled HTML Help files.

You can also provide Help topics through a combination of both standard and compiled HTML formats, most typically in the form of a locally installed compiled HTML Help file with jumps from individual topics or the table of contents to Web pages on an intranet, an extranet, or the Internet. In addition, you can display an HTML page contained in a compiled HTML Help file from Internet Explorer by using an appropriately formatted URL. For information about how to do this, see "Using a URL to Open a Page in a Compiled HTML Help File" later in this chapter.