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Feature
Simple Help
Simple in-app help for your projects
Issue: 5.3 (March/April 2007)
Author: Marc Zeedar
editor-at-rbdeveloper.com
Article Description: No description available.
Article Length (in bytes): 31,252
Starting Page Number: 14
RBD Number: 5309
Resource File(s):
5309.sit Updated: Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 9:02 AM
Related Link(s): None
Known Limitations: None
Excerpt of article text...
Sad as it may be, every program needs a help system, even if it's just a simple one. Computers are easier to use these days, and if your program is well done, hopefully your users will never even need to use the help system, but you should still provide one: it will save you technical support and it's a good way to communicate with your users.
Now you might think that since today's modern operating systems include their own built-in help systems it'd make the most sense to utilize those. Unfortunately, those systems are often complicated, requiring documentation in specific, unique formats. Even worse, the systems for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux are not compatible with each other, so if you're creating a cross-platform application, you have do a lot more work.
REALbasic does not include a help system (other than "tool tips" type help), but there are third-party applications such as UniHelp that do a fabulous job at creating cross-platform help. These additions, however, do cost money and are more complicated, though they are quite powerful and flexible.
...End of Excerpt. Please purchase the magazine to read the full article.
Article copyrighted by REALbasic Developer magazine. All rights reserved.
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