Help Server is ASP.NET application exposing content of .CHM help files on the web, so users all over the world may browse them online using generally any web browser (for example, Internet Explorer or Firefox). Help Server user interface is very similar to built-in Windows Help Viewer (or MSDN Library Viewer), which is quite familiar to Windows users.

Features

Windows Help Viewer \ MSDN Library Viewer look & feel

  • 3-area UI: full-width header, left and right panes
  • Left pane displays a set of tabs (“Contents”, “Index”, “Search”)
  • Right pane displays active topic
  • Header can display generally anything – it’s fully customizable

Convenient content tree (TOC) navigation

  • AJAX-based navigation tree implementation
  • Node content is transparently requested from the server when it’s opened for the first time
  • “Show next N…” feature: when there are more then 50 child nodes, they’re shown part-by-part (50, 100, 200, etc.)
  • Automatic synchronization of left and right panes on link proceeding
  • “Sync” button brings URL of active document to the topmost frame

Convenient index navigation

  • AJAX-based implementation
  • Index page content is transparently requested from the server on typing or scrolling

Powerful search features

  • Full-text search based on full-text indexes stored in help files. Search tab looks almost the same as in MSDN Library Viewer
  • Upcoming feature: keyword index based on index stored in help files (AJAX-based implementation)

Single configuration point: Config.xml file

  • Allows to join multiple .CHM and HTML files into the global table of contents
  • Simple XML structure

Ready for enterprise customers

  • Zero downtime is guaranteed on updates of help files in the runtime, or the whole collection of them! Such updates may continue for many hours – client will be able to browse old help collections until it’s finished, and will notice the update only by tree refresh on the next subsequent request. The moment of help update completion is determined automatically by a delay passed after last update in “Resources” folder.
  • Extremely large help collections are supported – for example, browsing a collection of 100000-1000000 documents shouldn’t be a problem at all!

Compatible with leading browsers and all crawlers

  • Internet Explorer 5.5+, Mozilla and Firefox are currently fully supported
  • Spiders and crawlers are provided with special versions of TOC web pages allowing them to index the whole document hierarchy

Customizable

  • Logo and all visible strings\messages are fully customizable (some of such for licensed users only)
  • 2 skins are bundled into installation package: one is similar to new MSDN Library Viewer (Grey), another is close to Office 2003 (Blue)

Reusable

  • You’re still thinking how to implement help in your web application? We know the answer: Help Server provides JavaScript API allowing to utilize its functionality in your web application. So we brought standard-based help to ASP.NET world!
  • All files contained in .CHM help files are exposed for web browsers as if they are located in folders with names of .CHM files – so switching from locally installed help to online help (and vice versa) can be easily implemented – it’s just necessary to modify the prefixes of URLs pointing of help topics
  • Help Server UI is built with a set of its own ASP.NET controls. All these controls as well as all .aspx pages using them are shipped with full source code, so it’s possible to customize almost any part of UI. The only closed part is HelpEngine used by these controls – it’s shipped as a set of assemblies.

Screenshots

Help Server screenshot Help Server screenshot

Benefits

So why it’s better to use Online Help Viewer rather then to publish HTML files from which .CHM is built? Let’s look on just some of benefits:

  • Table of contents can be very large in large help collections – consequently, plain HTML without any server-side code can’t provide necessary navigation flexibility. Imagine delivery of 1Mb table of contents to the client via slow connection!
  • Full-text search and keyword index aren’t normally provided by HTML help generators at all, or their support is quite poor.
  • Help Viewer ensures there will be no downtime at all on any help updates. Downtime of web site showing online help on updates of help collection is obviously anticipated by end-users.
  • It’s much faster and convenient to copy\replace just a single .CHM file, rather then replace, for example, 10000 HTML files, especially when web site is located on a distant server (hosted). Few thousands of small files may take hours to get uploaded to a distant server, so why not to deal with archived collection of all of them? Note that compressing factor is usually close to 10 for .CHM help files.
  • It’s always convenient for users to deal with UI they already know – Help Viewer UI is almost a full clone of MSDN Library Viewer.

There are certainly some other factors, for example, Help Server UI should look better then the same provided by most of HTML help generators.