I’m facing spinal surgery later in the week and what I understand will be fairly long recovery. I’d like to try to learn to write HTML Help Files, after the pain dies down. And since I don’t know if I will be able to sit at the computer all that long, I’d like the Help Authoring tools to be free. I’d also like the names of a few How to Write HTML Help Files books; I don’t expect the books to be free.
Thanks for any and all recommendations.
I use Help Maker to do the help files for the application I’m in charge of. It does give you the option of looking at the raw HTML if you’d like, but it’s mostly a GUI interface for a WYSIWYG type editor. Can’t help with any book recomendations.
Best of luck and well wishes on a speedy recovery!
Check Microsoft’s website; they used to give away the HTML Help Workshop for free. It’s not as much of a helper application as the larger (and pretty expensive) HATs (Help Authoring Tools) such as RoboHELP, Madcap, Doc-to-Help or ForeHelp (if those two even exist anymore, I’m not sure) - you’ll have to do a lot of the linking and building of table of contents and indexes manually instead of through wizards and such. That said, building help this way manually will give you a better idea of all the pieces parts and how they fit together, which is pretty valuable.
Sadly, I don’t have any offhand book recommendations.