West Wind HTML Help Builder

Last updated:
December 30, 2007

Ready to start documenting your end user applications and components? Then Help has arrived - HTML Help Builder makes short work of creating documentation for your applications by providing powerful tools for creating documentation both for end user application and component documentation.

Help Builder's unique approach focuses on content creation to make you more productive when creating documentation. Help Builder separates content from design by using templates that merge topic text with customizable HTML, providing a consistent look and feel to your help file. Use Help Builder's mark-up tools to quickly insert specific markup, capture screen shots, insert images, and create cross links to other topics intuitively. Many thoughtful tools in the environment make the process so productive you will actually enjoy building documentation as you work.

If you're a developer you'll love Help Builder's one-click support for importing classes from .NET, COM and Visual FoxPro. You can also import and auto-document SQL Server 2000/2005 and Visual FoxPro databases. Help Builder also integrates with Visual Studio .NET 2005 and Visual FoxPro to make Help Builder available directly in your development environment. Finally, Help Builder can be automated as a COM Server as well as through a .NET interface, so you can create automated routines to populate content dynamically if you choose. You can also extend Help Builder with an Add-in interface using any .NET Language, COM or FoxPro.

When you're done creating content, generate output for HTML Help files (Version 1.0 and 2.0), plain HTML for professional display of your documentation on your Web site, and to Word 2000 or later for a printable version.

Here's what Help Builder's rich IDE looks like previewing an auto-imported .NET class.

Click on image for larger view
This form is an example of a class imported from a .NET assembly. All the information was retrieved
from the assembly meta data and XML documentation. Although this demonstrates developer
documentation end user content is just as easy to create.

Take advantage of these cool features:

Powerful HTML Help like IDE
Focus on content creation not 'design tweaking'
Clear separation of content and design via scripted HTML templates
Real time preview of each topic including link jumping in the IDE
Visual HTML editing of topics or plain text for writing efficiency - your choice.
Intuitive Markup tools for most common task.
Optionally use plain HTML for complex custom features.
Easy cross-linking to other topics and Web content
Easily capture screen images from within Help Builder
Generate output to Html Help 1.0 and 2.0, MS Word and plain HTML
Easily upload your HTML documentation to your Web Site via FTP
Html Help 2.0 Support - generates Hxs, and Merge Collections
for VS.NET Integration along with simple deployment steps.
Extensible: Allows custom topic types and custom fields
Custom icon support in HTML Help files

Developer Features

Component and developer documentation tools
Easily format HTML, XML and Source code in your topics
Syntax color highlighting for code: C#, VB.NET, VFP, Java, HTML and XML
IDE Integration with VS.NET 2003 and Visual FoxPro:
Update Form controls with Help Context Ids/Keywords and pop up
Help Builder context sensitively from within your development environment.

Component and Database Imports:

Import .NET assemblies and types
Import COM classes and entire typelibraries
Import Sql Server Database or individual tables
Import Visual FoxPro classes and Databases
Import WSDL Web Services
Once topics have been imported they can be further modified
allowing addition of things like examples, notes etc.
Two way tools in VS.NET allow you to change comments
in source code or Help Builder and update each other.

Standards based and Extensible:

HTML Templates let you completely customize the design
CSS Style Sheet keep your design consistent
Simple layout design is easy to customize:
No overly complex style schemes like the MSDN docs
ASP Style Scripting for templates: Write code to make it do what you need it to do beyond our templates. Full access to object model!
Full COM and .NET Automation interface to the Help Builder engine and forms interface
VS.NET and Visual FoxPro Integration samples are provided

Help Builder has been created by developers for developers so we use this tool every day to document our own components and tools. We use it for end user as well as developer documentation, for creation and archiving of internal knowledgebases, as a code depository, BLOG editor and archiver and much, much more. The content creation opportunities are endless.

So what are you waiting for? Take a test drive with our fully functional shareware version to see for yourself how productive you can be creating documentation. Download it today!

Do you need Html Help 2.0?
If you are building end user documentation we would not recommend Html Help 2.0 as your final Help target as there's no direct support for Html Help 2.0 in the operating system. Html Help 2.0 is geared for MSDN and Visual Studio .NET type developer documentation. With HTML 2.0 content you can target your help file to be displayed in the MSDN viewer or from within VS.NET either as a standalone file or merged with the MSDN/VS.NET Help content.

This page has been visited 299741 times since August 26, 1998
Updated 12/30/07

Help Builder 4.46 released!

12/31/2007
We've released Version 4.46 of Help Builder which provides enhanced support for .NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005 and 2008. This update also runs properly on Windows Vista. There have been many operational enhancements and tweaks per user requests. Take a look and see all that is new in this update to Help Builder.

Help Builder integrates with:

Download Help Builder
Version 4.45 - 9/3/2007
Download the fully functional shareware version of HTML Help Builder today and find out what all the fuss is about. Help has definitely arrived!

Help Builder Tutorial Videos
Want to see how Help Builder works? Check out these streaming videos including a high level feature walk through, and several specialized training sessions that highlight specific features of the product .

Online documentation and walk through
Check out how Help Builder works in detail with the online documentation in HTML format. The documentation, created with Help Builder, also includes a detailed Step by Step Guide to you can read through right here on this site to get a feel for what Help Builder can do for you.

Features
Pricing
What's new
Online Support
Documentation

Online sample: Create docs from .Net assemblies and COM type libs
Check out this online sample that uses the wwHelp COM object to dynamically generate documentation for a .NET assembly or a COM type library. Fill out a form and let Help Builder generate a HTML Help File and HTML documentation for you that you can be download in Zip format.

Add-ins Gallery
Help Builder just started supporting Add-ins and we've put up a page that will host Add-ins as they become available. For the moment it's a placeholder, but we're hoping that developers will come up with cool extensions since so many have asked for this functionality.

Online Help File Samples
Here are a few other samples of documentation created with West Wind HTML Help Builder:

    West Wind Web Store .NET
    West Wind Web Connection
    West Wind Web Monitor