Fast-Help

FastHelp is a Windows Help File Generator that produces online and offline documentation.
Fast-Help is a Windows Help File Generator that produces online and offline documentation. Compile to any of the following formats, all from a single source editor. That means you type once and compile to whatever format you need.

• HtmlHelp (.CHM)
• WinHelp (.HLP)
• Website Help
• Printable Manuals
• MS Word Manuals
• PDF
• Windows Mobile Help
• wxWidgets Help

Fast-Help - Features

Fast-Help (formerley DotCHM) is a Microsoft Windows Help File Generator that produces, HTML Help (.CHM), WinHelp (.HLP), Website Help, printable manuals, Microsoft Word manuals and PDFs. Fast-Help International includes all of the features of Fast-Help with the addition of the Translation Assistant.

New features in version 4.4 include:

• wxWidgets: This is a new Compile Option. wxWidgets has become very popular recently as a cross-platform programming framework and it comes with its own help system and viewer, which is very similar to HtmlHelp in appearance. You can now compile to wxWidgets help from the compile screen and it will produce a single file with the extension ".htb". These files ares viewable in Windows, Linux and Mac OS X
• Global Changes: This new feature is available from the Format menu and allows you to choose from several tasks that affect your whole Project. This could be changing font or paragraph settings or adding text or images to every page
• AutoLinking: This is an automatic, rule-based feature, that will create your links at compile time, in HtmlHelp, Website Help and wxWidgets Help
• Website Help: Previously, a page that was loaded outside of the "index.html" page, would display as a standalone page, rather than displaying with the framework of Table of Contents, Index, Search etc. This could happen if a search engine such as Google, indexed your site and a user displayed one of your website pages. Now, when a website page loads, it checks to see of it is being displayed outside of the framework. If it is, then it automatically loads itself within the framework, instead of independantly
• Apple MAC Support for Website Help: On the compile menu for Website Help is a new option, "Enable Apple MAC Browser Support". When checked, this will save all the related JavaScript files as ANSI instead of Unicode. The main html pages will still work as Unicode if you are using Unicode. The supported browsers under the Apple MAC are Safari and Internet Explorer v5.5
• Flyover Hints: Previously you could double-click an image and make hotspot areas which were clickable. These linked to topics or popups or urls. Now you can choose "Hint" as an option. This allows you to type in a string of text up to 255 characters. When you pass your mouse over the hotspot of the image the hint will appear. This will work in HtmlHelp and any browser that supports hints
• Image HotSpots can now link to an "Internet" link, so you can now point HotSpots to urls
• Insert Page Break: This is a new option on the "Insert" menu. When selected, you will see a horizontal line with a page curl at the end, to signify the page break. It can be deleted like any other character. The Page Break will only be used when compiling to the documentation formats
• PDF Printer Adjustments: There is a new tab on the PDF options screen called "Printer Adjustments", which allows you to adjust the size of the page as it prints to PDF. This is to work around an overlapping of text issue that can happen with some printer drivers
• Printer Page Size: The "Documentation Options" screen as a new section "Printer Settings" where you can set the Page size and Orientation. These settings apply to all the documentation formats, including PDF
• The Translation view has a new option "Show the Contents Tree", to show the Contents as a hierarchy instead of a list-only view
• The Translation view also now has a Styles Combo box, which works in the same way as the Styles box in the main Help Text editor
• The Right-click menu in the Help Text area, will now show all available Table options, if the cursor is currently within a table
• When you select "Paste as Plain Text", the current style is now used and all pasted text is formatted to that style
• Importing MS Office Documents: A new help screen will be displayed if there are problems importing, suggesting some common solutions
• Website Help: Clicking the Back button in a browser to go back to the Contents, could cause a "False" error to appear at the top of the screen in Netscape. This has been fixed
• Style Gallery: The Custom Color for background colors was not working correctly. This has been fixed
• Zooming in the HotSpot editor, could clear all HotSpots. This has been fixed.

New features in version 4 include:

• Website Help can now be called by passing a HelpID or a Context String. Simply recompile with v4 and you can open a page using "..\Index.html?3400" or "..\Index.html?Welcome", using HelpID or Context String respectively
• Images are now resizable and resizing will maintain the aspect ratio of the image. Users can now also rename and save resized images to new file names and convert between all common graphic formats from within the editor. The International version also now allows the Translator to control the replacement of images that need translating
• Save Project As. This new option on the File menu will make a copy of your Project in a new folder, and move across all your images and any Translations you may have
• The Edit menu has a new option, "Delete Multiple Pages". This displays a check box beside each Contents entry and allows you to quickly delete any checked page
• The Conditions screen has two new options, Globaly Apply and Globaly Remove, allowing you to quickly add or remove a Condition to every page in your Project
• On the Properties tab is a new "Lock This Page" option. When this option is checked your page will be read-only, preventing further editing. This is a useful way to mark your pages as completed, indicating that they should no longer be changed
• The Insert Image screen now has a Favorites section. This allows you to quickly select one of your favorite folders. This is very useful when you store images in multiple locations and want to quickly navigate between them. Clicking the Add Favorites button will add the currently selected folder as one of your favorite locations. To delete any favorite folder from the list, select it from the drop down list and click the Remove Favorite button
• Users can now right-click in Help Text and select "Set Project Background Colors". This will load the new "Background Colors" tab in Project Settings. Previously you could only change the colors from the Windows tab in compiler options for WinHelp or HtmlHelp. This is now a more intuitive way of changing the background colors
• The Properties tab has a new option for controlling page breaks in Documentation. "When compiling Documentation - do not start this Topic on a new page." When this option is checked, and you are compiling Documentation, this Topic will not start on a new page. This enhances the existing general options for page breaks on the Compile screen.

Features include:

• Low learning curve. When creating a help file, it is usually the last task to complete in a long list of tasks, so you need it quickly. Fast-Help is designed to do what the name suggests, create a help file in quick time
• Single Source editor: Type your help text into an intuitive, powerful editor and compile to one of seven formats without worrying about how the different formats work. Fast-Help converts everything for you, including Index's and Table of Contents
• If something can be done automatically in Fast-Help then we've thought of it. Your help authoring experience is made as smooth as possible with all the complexitites of a help file automatically handled for you and hidden away in property sheets for you to change if you ever need to
• Built-in hotspot editor for creating clickable areas of your images, allowing for a very intuitive experience for your users
• Unicode! Fast-Help is fully unicode compatible, so there are no restrictions on the languages you can create or translate into. Japanese, Chinese, Arabic etc, are all par for the course with Fast-Help
• Use powerful features such as Conditions and Variables to speed up the writing of your help file. Conditions allow you to insert conditional blocks of text where you can say, "include the following block of text only if a certain condition is true, otherwise exclude it". You can use this powerful feature to compile specific versions for certain customers or to type in beta version information which you can then include or exlcude from certain compiles
• Website Help includes a full text search option as well as Index and Table of Contents. You can also open the website at any page by passing a HelpID or ContextString, in the same way as you call context sensitive help in a WinHelp or a CHM file
• Insert Images, create links, insert videos, swf files, sound etc, all with ease
• Dynamically resize images with full aspect ratio