Progress
Help Development
Guide


Designing a Help System

The most important thing to consider in designing a help system is the information needs of the end user. There are two main steps involved in designing a help system:

  1. Plan the help access methods in the application.
  2. Determine when the user will need help and what mechanisms you will use to supply help. For context-sensitive help, users can click a help key or a help button to access a topic in the help system or click the question mark icon and then click a control to access control-level help. For immediate access to the Help Topics dialog box, use a help menu or a help key call from the application.

  3. Design the help topic structure.
  4. Your combined knowledge of the information needs of the end user and the access methods you plan helps determine the number and order of help topics you need to create. Usually, you create one context-sensitive topic per application context (normally a window, frame, or dialog box). You design reference help topics like reference information in a printed reference manual-modular, concise, and accessed primarily through the Help Topics dialog box, browse sequences, and jumps.


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