Back in the old days, Help was not trivial but possible: generate some funky .rtf file with special tags, run it through a compiler, and you got a WinHelp file (.hlp) that actually works really well.
Then, Microsoft decided that WinHelp was not hip and cool anymore and switched to CHM, up to the point they actually axed WinHelp from Vista.
Now, CHM maybe nice, but everyone that tried to open a .chm file on the Network will know the nice "Navigation to the webpage was canceled" screen that is caused by security restrictions.
While there are ways to make CHM work off the network, this is hardly a good choice, because when a user presses the Help Button he wants help and not have to make some funky settings.
Bottom Line: I find CHM absolutely unusable. But with WinHelp not being an option anymore either, I wonder what the alternatives are, especially when it comes to integrate with my Application (i.e. for WinHelp and CHM there are functions that allow you to directly jump to a topic)?
PDF has the disadvantage of requiring the Adobe Reader (or one of the more lightweight ones that not many people use). I could live with that seeing as this is kind of standard nowadays, but can you tell it reliably to jump to a given page/anchor?
HTML files seem to be the best choice, you then just have to deal with different browsers (CSS and stuff).
Edit: I am looking to create my own Help Files. As I am a fan of the "No Setup, Just Extract and Run" Philosophy, i had that problem many times in the past because many of my users will run it off the network, which causes exactly this problem.
So i am looking for a more robust and future-proof way to provide help to my users without having to code a different help system for each application i make.
CHM is a really nice format, but that Security Stuff makes it unusable, as a Help system is supposed to provide help to the user, not to generate even more problems.
HTML would be the next best choice, ONLY IF you would serve them from a public web server. If you tried to bundle it with your app, all the files (and images (and stylesheets (and ...) ) ) would make CHM look like a gift from gods.
That said, when actually bundled in the installation package, (instead of being served over the network), I found the CHM files to work nicely.
OTOH, another pitfall about CHM files: Even if you try to open a CHM file on a local disk, you may bump into the security block if you initially downloaded it from somewhere, because the file could be marked as "came from external source" when it was obtained.
I don't like the html option, and actually moved from plain HTML to CHM by compressing and indexing them. Even use them on a handful of non-Windows customers even.
It simply solved the constant little breakage of people putting it on the network (nesting depth limited, strange locking effects), antivirus that died in directories with 30000 html files, and 20 minutes decompression time while installing on an older system, browser safety zones and features, miscalculations of needed space in the installer etc.
And then I don't even include the people that start "correcting" them, 3rd party product with faulty "integration" attempts etc, complaints about slowliness (browser start-up)
We all had waited years for the problems to go away as OSes and hardware improved, but the problems kept recurring in a bedazzling number of varieties and enough was enough. We found chmlib, and decided we could forever use something based on this as escape with a simple external reader, if the OS provided ones stopped working and switched.
Meanwhile we also have an own compiler, so we are MS free future-proof. That doesn't mean we never will change (solutions with local web-servers seem favourite nowadays), but at least we have a choice.
Our software is both distributed locally to the clients and served from a network share. We opted for generating both a CHM file and a set of HTML files for serving from the network. Users starting the program locally use the CHM file, and users getting their program served from a network share has to use the HTML files.
We use Help and Manual and can thus easily produce both types of output from the same source project. The HTML files also contain searching capabilities and doesn't require a web server, so though it isn't an optimal solution, works fine.
So far all the single-file types for Windows seems broken in one way or another:
WinHelp - obsoleted
HtmlHelp (CHM) - obsoleted on Vista, doesn't work from network share, other than that works really nice
Microsoft Help 2 (HXS) - this seems to work right up until the point when it doesn't, corrupted indexes or similar, this is used by Visual Studio 2005 and above, as an example
If you don't want to use an installer and you don't want the user to perform any extra steps to allow CHM files over the network, why not fall back to WinHelp? Vista does not include WinHlp32.exe out of the box, but it is freely available as a download for both Vista and Server 2008.
It depends on how import the online documentation is to your product, a good documentation infrastructure can be complex to establish but once done it pays off. Here is how we do it -
Help source DITA compilant XML, stored in SCC (ClearCase).
Help editing XMetal
Help compilation, customized Open DITA Toolkit, with custom Perl/Java preprocessing
Help source cross references applications resources at compile time, .RC files etc
Help deliverables from single source, PDF, CHM, Eclipse Help, HTML.
Single source repository produces help for multiple products 10+ with thousands of shared topics.
From what you describe I would look at Eclipse Help, its not simple to integrate into .NET or MFC applications, you basically have to do the help mapping to resolve the request to a URL then fire the URL to Eclipse Help wrapper or a browser.
Is the question how to generate your own help files, or what is the best help file format?
Personally, I find CHM to be excellent. One of the first things I do when setting up a machine is to download the PHP Manual in CHM format (http://www.php.net/download-docs.php) and add a hotkey to it in Crimson Editor. So when I press F1 it loads the CHM and performs a search for the word my cursor is on (great for quick function reference).
If you are doing "just extract and run", you are going to run in security issues. This is especially true if you are users are running Vista (or later). is there a reason why you wanted to avoid packaging your applications inside an installer? Using an installer would alleviate the "external source" problem. You would be able to use .chm files without any problems.
We use InstallAware to create our install packages. It's not cheap, but is very good. If cost is your concern, WIX is open source and pretty robust. WIX does have a learning curve, but it's easy to work with.
PDF has the disadvantage of requiring the Adobe Reader
I use Foxit Reader on Windows at home and at work. A lot smaller and very quick to open. Very handy when you are wondering what exactly a80000326.pdf is and why it is clogging up your documents folder.
I think the solution we're going to end up going with for our application is hosting the help files ourselves. This gives us immediate access to the files and the ability to keep them up to date.
What I plan is to have the content loaded into a huge series of XML files, each one containing help for a specific item. This XML would contain links to other XML files. We would use XSLT to display the contents as necessary.
Depending on the licensing, we may build a client-specific XSLT file in order to tailor the look and feel to what they need. We may need to be able to only show help for particular versions of our product as well and that can be done by filtering out stuff in the XSLT.
I use a commercial package called AuthorIT that can generate a number of different formats, such as chm, html, pdf, word, windows help, xml, xhtml, and some others I have never heard of (does dita ring a bell?).
It is a content management system oriented towards the needs of technical documentation writers.
The advantage is that you can use and re-use the same content to build a set of guides, and then generate them in different formats.
So the bottom line relative to the question of choosing chm or html or whatever is that if you are using this you are not locked into a given format, but you can provide several among which the user can choose, and you can even add more formats as you go along, at no extra cost.
If you just have one guide to create it won't be worth your while, but if you have a documentation set to manage then it is the best to my knowledge. Their support is very helpful also.
Related
Back in the old days, Help was not trivial but possible: generate some funky .rtf file with special tags, run it through a compiler, and you got a WinHelp file (.hlp) that actually works really well.
Then, Microsoft decided that WinHelp was not hip and cool anymore and switched to CHM, up to the point they actually axed WinHelp from Vista.
Now, CHM maybe nice, but everyone that tried to open a .chm file on the Network will know the nice "Navigation to the webpage was canceled" screen that is caused by security restrictions.
While there are ways to make CHM work off the network, this is hardly a good choice, because when a user presses the Help Button he wants help and not have to make some funky settings
Bottom Line: I find CHM absolutely unusable. But with WinHelp not being an option anymore either, I wonder what the alternatives are, especially when it comes to integrate with my Application (i.e. for WinHelp and CHM there are functions that allow you to directly jump to a topic)?
PDF has the disadvantage of requiring the Adobe Reader (or one of the more lightweight ones that not many people use). I could live with that seeing as this is kind of standard nowadays, but can you tell it reliably to jump to a given page/anchor?
HTML files seem to be the best choice, you then just have to deal with different browsers (CSS and stuff).
Edit: I am looking to create my own Help Files. As I am a fan of the "No Setup, Just Extract and Run" Philosophy, i had that problem many times in the past because many of my users will run it off the network, which causes exactly this problem.
So i am looking for a more robust and future-proof way to provide help to my users without having to code a different help system for each application i make.
CHM is a really nice format, but that Security Stuff makes it unusable, as a Help system is supposed to provide help to the user, not to generate even more problems.
Yep, at some point they want to add behaviour to their help files which makes it a security issue and guess what happens, the remedy being often worse than the threat.
Or it's too simple or too complicated and being replaced by something new without caring for backward compatibility.
If you want it really simple and build for the ages go for .TXT
You didn't specify what your apps are coded in so it depends.
If it's a web app, plain HTML would be the best choice, for a help file you don't need special features or javascript so being browser independant should be straightforward. But also for desktop apps HTML, on- or offline are often used with good results.
PDF is the other general solution, and yes you can jump to specific pages, see this answer. Every pc has (or should) one client or the other installed, I wouldn't worry about that. I myself never choose Acrobat Reader, faster, sompler and often better solutions are available, my favorite is Sumatra.
I'm sure .Net apps have their own help system (no experience here) and many languages have options to display tooltips, windows or pages with help either by pressing a hotkey (F1) or clicking some control dialog.
someone asked a similar question a few years ago, but I need some additional detail.
I'm looking to build out a searchable image library for my company. We have thousands of images and I'm trying to find the best way to "tag them" so-to-speak. The images are stored on a network drive and accessed by both Mac and Windows users. I work on a Mac and have Adobe Bridge, but not everyone accessing these images will. I've seen that in Windows, you can add tags to files for searching, and in OS X, you can add Spotlight comments (delimited by commas, it can be used as search tags), however, the 2 don't carry over across platforms.
Is there anything out there that may help in accomplishing this goal?
I'm not sure how XML works. If I apply tags in Bridge or another software, will these tags be available to everyone, on whatever platform, if they are using a software that can read them? How does this work? Do they simply open the folder in one of those programs and have the ability to search and filter?
Thanks in advance!
I am afraid I don't have a panacea for all file formats (JPG/PNG/TIFF etc) across all OSes (macOS, Linux, Windows) across disparate application software (Photoshop/Lightroom/GIMP and MS-Paint or whatever Microsoft's offering is). However, if I put what I know, maybe someone else will know better and tell us so! Or maybe someone will know some better solutions for some pieces of the puzzle. So, in that vein...
If you have, know and love Adobe Bridge and you are "The Keeper" of the data, I would input, manage and control all metadata through that.
Then I believe you will need to find a way to do a nightly/weekly automated distribution of that data in a format intelligible to the "users" of the data. So, you will need to achieve the following:
Schedule an export from Bridge - my idea would be OSX's launchd
Export metadata from Adobe Bridge - my idea would be Adobe Extendscript
At this point I am thinking I would want to go with the easiest to parse, probably CSV (Comma Separated Values)
Now you have the info and will have to look at what your client users are using for application software and OS, and generate something intelligible to them from the CSV. I am thinking of tools like jhead, exiftool, ImageMagick (which can insert IPTC data).
So, there's a marker in the sand... if anyone knows better - please share your knowledge!
Other possibilities that spring to mind, are Lightroom which is reputedly excellent with metadata handling, or a dedicated picture-searching web-based application on your Intranet that runs on a small database updated nightly from exported Bridge metadata.
I guess the nature of the users' enquiries will be pretty important in deciding a way to go....
I have a serious issue, my harddisk crashed yesterday , and i had tons of projects on it .I lost most of them but the ones i recovered are all the debug folders i sent to clients (most of them are desktop applications). I am unable to recover the code for most of the work , but i do have debug folders , my question is is there any way that i can recover my code from them.
I am sure some one you would have gone through it in the past, please help if you have any information regarding this.
Files in the debug folder:Example i make application apple
apple.exe type=application
apple.pdb type=PDBFIle
apple.vshost type=Application
apple.vshost.exe.mainfest type=MANIFEST File
ADDITIONAL INFO:
My laptop hardisk crashed so i am currently using it as a usb drive with another laptop . I had 3 partitions but now i see 4 i,j,k,l . One of them which used to be my D: drive working fine, i see it shows 72 GB free out of 150 GB. Rest of them they are just there no info, when i click them nothing for minutes then it says format drive etc... If you know how to fix that that would be wonderful.
Thank you
You really lucked out with having access to the Debug folders containing your compiled binaries. The fact that you're working in a managed language (C#) means that you can use one of the many .NET decompilers to display the source code that they contain in a readable format. It may not be exactly the same as what you initially typed into Visual Studio, but it will be pretty darn close—way better than can normally be expected in the event of a system crash.
I used to recommend Redgate's .NET Reflector for this task, but they recently decided to eliminate the free version of their decompiler utility and adopted some business practices that I personally disagreed with. Then again, their tools are probably still the best around, so you might consider downloading their 30-day trial to attempt to get your code back. Who knows, you might like it so much that you buy!
If you're a cheapskate like me, or a devotee to truly free software, you can try one of the free alternatives that cropped up after Reflector became not free, like ILSpy, developed by the same people who develop SharpDevelop. Even more alternatives are listed here.
Whichever decompiler utility you choose, download a copy and open its executable. Then from the "File" menu, choose "Open", and navigate to the first compiled .exe from which you want to recover source. The utility will display the name of your application and some metadata about your assembly. From here, you can make sure that you opened the correct file.
In both ILSpy and .NET Reflector, you can click the [+] toggle next to your application's name to expand its listing. You'll see a bunch more expandable items, like References (the DLLs that your application uses), Resources (the resource files compiled into your application), and the namespaces defined in your code. Expanding an individual namespace will show you all of the types defined in that namespace, and expanding a type will show you all of the types, methods, members, etc. defined in that type, and so on down the hierarchy. Clicking on individual items in the source tree to the left will display the decompiled code in the output pane to the right; both ILSpy and .NET Reflector support displaying the code as C#, which should look very readable to you.
For example, using ILSpy to open the ILSpy.exe application itself produces the following output:
You really can't break anything in here, so navigate around, exploring and seeing what all can be recovered, amazed at how well this works. Everything works just as well with DLLs as it does with EXEs.
Then get started copying and pasting...
The next order of business is getting your system stable again. If you had a hard disk crash, you definitely don't want to trust that drive ever again! Run out and buy a new one immediately, wipe it, and reload Windows.
Once you finish with that, you definitely want to get on setting up a source/version/revision control system to use in the future to store your code. All smart developers use this for so many reasons. Find more information with a Google search. There are lots of different options. Which one you pick is not important; the important thing is that you pick one!
i'm facing a challenge of rebrushing and updating an almost 10-years old Screenweaver project, and looking for a decent modern swf-exe convertor. Don't have much time to evaluate all the options, therefore i'd like to hear responses with actual working experience with such a tool.
Since WinAPI interaction is a must, the default projector is not an option.
Similar questions (no concrete answers there)
Package SWF into an EXE or APP
Create an EXE from a SWF using Flex 3 without requiring AIR?
Many thanks
UPD: 300 bounty for anyone who can help me with a practical answer.
I've been experimenting with different SWF projectors for a long time now, and so far I think I've tried most if not all of them. I've explained in more detail the best projectors I have used below.
MDM Zinc
http://www.multidmedia.com/software/zinc/
I remember back in when I had Vista that MDM had quite a few bugs running under that OS. It took a while for them to fix those bugs - the bugs didn't stop it from running, but really interfered with the functioning of some methods in the program. For this reason, I decided not to continue testing Zinc and moved on to another projector. Saying that though, I'm certain they have fixed those bugs now.
The program itself has a nice intuitive interface, and allows you create screensaver as well as EXEs (which is obviously good for you).
The product is pricey - currently at $349.99, so this put me off.
You can also generate Mac and Linux projectors which is very attractive, but requires an additional license for each which does cost a lot of money.
SWF Studio
http://www.northcode.com/
This was one of the projectors I really enjoyed working with. It's fully featured, has great community support and the developers are always on hand to help. The projectors it generates are compatible with all Windows operating systems, and I've never had any problems with bugs on this one.
Northcode also offer a student license for SWF Studio for $49. I nearly purchased a license with these guys but the only reason why I didn't was because I found another projector which was better for my scenario which I will come onto in a moment.
I can tell you that one of the reasons why I didn't use this projector (it does sound trivial) is because it had a large file size. SWF Studio allows you to select what size projector you want in terms of filesize - with options like tiny and compact I think but the smaller file types might have dependencies with other files in the directory. This means that you would have to bundle your application with some folders and additional files as well as the EXE itself.
SWF Studio also has the option to create screensavers.
mProjector
http://www.screentime.com/software/flash-projector
mProjector has gone up a version (from 3 to 4) since I last used it, so it may incorporate a lot more features in this version. I remember that the product is very good with transparency, and showcases some 'screen buddies' which use transparency to virtually walk about your screen. The reason why I didn't use this projector is because it didn't have as many Actionscript functions as I would have liked, but I believe it has a lot more nowadays. In your project this wouldn't be so much of a problem because you want a screensaver.
It is reasonably priced at $399 for both Windows and Mac compatibility, but you can buy just Windows or Mac if you wish for a cheaper price.
Janus Flash
I was going to explain this product in more detail but I have now realised that the website no longer exists! Janus is the projector I liked the most and ended up using because of the sheer amount of features available for use in your code.
Like all the projectors I have mentioned above, each one adds functionality to flash which you don't usually get with an SWF. Each product includes pre-built actionscript methods which can interface with the operating system itself to do things you can't do in the Flash sandbox. For example, each one of these projectors allows you to manipulate files (add, edit, delete e.t.c.) on the computer. Janus had the most methods available out of all the projectors I tried. This is partially because Janus used the .NET framework (which meant that .NET 2.0 was required on the system you were executing the projector on).
Also like MDM Zinc, this product allowed you to create applications for the Mac too. I managed to get a cheaper price too when I contacted them directly explaining that I was a student. I recently contacted Janus-Flash to ask about the future of the product, and they said that they may re-release Janus in the future, but for now it's off the market.
Some other products I have used which are worth a mention but I haven't explained in detail: SWFKit, Jugglor, F-IN-BOX (more developer releated as it required cutting code).
A quick search brings up these which might be worth a look: Flash2Me, Flash EXE Builder and SWF to Screensaver.
For your project I think the best option would be SWF Studio. It has lots of nice scripting features you can use to interface with the OS, and is nicely priced too at $299 for a full license.
I hope this helps in your decision for what projector to use, and will save you from trying out many different projectors like I did over several months!
We support a lot of Win32 functionality directly in our core API so chances are you may not even have to make a direct API call, but if you do...
SWF Studio has an advanced Plugin API that allows you to write custom plugins in C++, C# or VB.NET so you can call win32 or .NET functions. We created our own ummanaged to managed code shim so you can write a native .NET plugin and call it from SWF Studio just as easily as you can write a Win32 plugin.
There's no difference between how you call a SWF Studio function in AS2 or AS3. We have maintained 100% backward compatibility in our API. Whether you're using AS2 or AS3, your calls will just work. And they'll continue to work.
However, the place we really shine is support. I created SWF Studio and I'm still in the forums EVERY day answering questions and fixing bugs.
My experience here is from a year ago.
Having worked with mProjector I can tell you that the AS3 API is quite robust and easy to use. I was able to wrap a large swf-based project using external assets up into an EXE without a lot of problems. The UI for mProjector's project gui leaves something to be desired, but the actual hooks to the file system were easy to use.
The difficulty is that not all of it is documented. In fact there were as of a year ago a lot of undocumented packages.
My only real problem with mprojector was that in AS3 there wasn't any support for SharedObjects. Someone in their community worked around this and made their solution available. It does of course make use of storing a file on the local system.
This overall compared favorably against Zinc which was extraordinarily complex, slow to compile, and worse than having no documentation all the docs I needed were flat-out wrong.
I ruled out Jugglor almost immediately. It never successfuly compiled anything.
Since this is an old project you're talking about, and written in AS2, I can't speak to that side of it. I can say however that programs like Zinc and mProjector have been around a lot longer than AS3 has, and that the same hooks that are available in AS3 seemed to be available in AS2 also. The possibility exists that there may be more such hooks in AS2 since it's been supported for longer, but I cannot vouch for this at all.
I have used all of these applications, but most of all I liked theFlajector - a program that converts flash movies (swf) to exe files. You can include a flash player in generated applications and they will use it. In other words, the applications will work even if no flash player is installed. Also, Flajector can create windowless applications from flash movies. You can extend your applications using plugins. Using standard classes you can work with files and more.
I'm looking at getting a FireFox plugin developed - but is it possible to create a plugin that is for private use only, so only those I share it with have it and not open to the masses? Need this for 2 reasons; 1) while in BETA and 2) for my clients use only to start with.
Of course: just distribute the plugin install package (XPI if I am not mistaking) to the target users.
Note that won't prevent leaks, if any.
You could also be more fancy and "lock" the plugin to a set of computers: you have access to the whole machine when you design a plugin (e.g. NPAPI based). Then again, a determined hacker can always find a way.
Yes, of course this is possible.
Extensions (mentioning these because the term "plugin" is often misused to mean "extension") can be packed in a .xpi file that can be opened and installed by Firefox; see also this tutorial.
Proper plugins are a bit more work, see the Mozilla developer wiki.
While this works mostly on a psychological level, prominently displaying identifying information such as the user's name/email address or a company name/logo, may also help prevent users from distributing your work because it is obviously personalized/tailored software, and they may not want this information to be distributed along with your software.
Also, once you do distribute your extension to your target users, you can digitally sign the XPI files for each individual user (i.e. fingerprinting individual files within the XPI package), so that you can track back any leaks.
In addition, you as the author of the extension are of course free to implement a simple "talkback" mechanism so that you can track use of your extension, along with all sorts of other information that may be relevant to you (i.e. usage stats).
Similarly, XPI files are conventional ZIP files, so you can also password-protect them to make it more complicated to install them without proper instructions.