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Vista Certified

HelpStudio has passed the rigorous Microsoft Certified for Windows Vista testing, ensuring compatibility with Windows Vista.

Readers Choice Award

HelpStudio has been honored with a Visual Studio Magazine Readers Choice Merit award in the Help Authoring category. Winners are chosen by Visual Studio Magazine readers and honor excellent software in 23 development categories.

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White Papers

Localization with HelpStudio

Microsoft Quote

Managing documentation as part of developing software can be a surprisingly complex process. With HelpStudio we were able to create and maintain high-quality up-to-date documentation in a short amount of time and with very little overhead.

The flexibility of the HelpStudio made it easy to manage even complex tasks including localization and inclusion of “live” code snippets.

Henrik Frystyk Nielsen,
Group Program Manager, Microsoft

Customer Quote

We have been using HelpStudio since it first became available.

HelpStudio provides a nice blend of built-in functionality with full customizability, flexibility, and excellent support.

HelpStudio allows us to painlessly combine our API documentation created in Document! X with our User Guide documentation into one file that is easily integrated with our COM and Visual Studio .NET products.

Issam Elbaytam,
VP of Technical Marketing, Data Dynamics, Ltd.

Usage Scenarios

Glossary Item Box

Create help files quickly and easily and integrate them with your desktop or web based applications

HelpStudio is the fastest, easiest way to create Help files, publish and integrate them with your desktop or web based applications or components, including .NET. Generate help output in cross-platform plain HTML, HTML Help, Help 2.x or printable PDF. Built in localization support means that you can take your help system to a global audience if required.

Import your existing content from Html Help 1.x projects, word documents, RoboHelp projects or plain html files;
Create multiple outputs to Html Help 1.x CHM file, Pdf, Help 2.x or browser help from a single source. Use Build Flags to mark content for inclusion or exclusion in a particular output.
Industry leading WYSIWYG editor including a rich set of functionality for authoring and maintaining your core content;
Template based topic editing makes it easy to adapt the style of your content over time without having to rework the actual content;
Capture screenshots and annotate them with the included Screen Capture and Image Markup tools;
Multiple members of your team can create Help files using HelpStudio at the same time through integration with standard Source Control systems.

Download a free evaluation version and author a Help system within minutes

Download the Microsoft HtmlHelp Compiler (the HtmlHelp compiler is a free download that is necessary to compile help files)

Quickly and easily create help files using the intuitive HelpStudio User Interface

In addition to the core authoring functionality, HelpStudio includes a suite of project tools that enable you to ensure the quality of your final help system:

Validate all of the links in your help system using the Project Link Checker;
Check spelling throughout the project using the built in spell checker, which comes complete several european dictionaries;
Find and Replace throughout all of your content using the integrated Project Find and Replace;
Check your project for accessibility and standards compliance using the provided Project Analyzer.

Localization: Create a help system ready for a global market

When your application goes global you want your help system to be ready. In HelpStudio you can work with multiple locales within a single project, avoiding the traditional "localization drift" problem when trying to maintain multiple translations of the same CHM file.

HelpStudio includes a set of features designed to help you effectively localize your content:

Create any number of locales for your project but only define the Table of Contents, Topic, Glossary structures once - avoiding "localization drift";
Use the Xml Import Export wizard to extract only localizable content to a format optimized for use by translation companies;
Standard terminology in the HelpStudio Templates comes pre-translated to several languages;
The Localization Report allows to accurately track which content requires translation by recording timestamps each time content is edited or translated;
Configure different spelling dictionaries for each Locale that you work with.

Content Widgets: A unique way to author richer content

One challenge that anyone will face when attempting to create help content is providing the kind of rich content features that users of modern help systems expect, whilst not requiring a large investment of time and effort in creating and maintaining such content. HelpStudio is unique in making it genuinely quick and easy to include (and adapt over time) rich content features by providing a customizable and extendable set of re-usable Content Widgets.

Imagine that you wanted to include a drop down section in your content (a drop down section consists of a header and initially hidden associated content which is shown / hidden when the header is clicked). In a traditional authoring tool you would need to include a complex mix of Html and Javascript in order to provide this kind of dynamic feature. In HelpStudio, simply insert a Drop Down Section widget, edit the header and drop down content as you wish. HelpStudio ships with a set of standard Widgets that can be customized and extended as you wish.