MS Help Viewer 1.0

Information

• Publications
  • Introducing MS Help Viewer 1.0 - by MVP Rob Chandler [Last update: 1-Apr-2010]
    - Learn about MS Help Viewer, its tags and migrating your existing Help 2 content.
  • MS Help Viewer Documentation on MSDN - Basic online help.
  • Help Viewer 1.0 SDK - Deep dive for developers and integrators + some C# code.
     

• Discussion Groups
  • MSHelpViewer Yahoo Discussion Group
    Community group of VS 2010 help integrators. Run by MVPs, with MS presence.
  • MSDN Forums > Developer Documentation and Help System
    Send in your feedback and questions here. Official MS discussion group for developer help.
     
• Blogs, Twitter, Facebook
  • MSDN Blogs
    • The Help Guy - Paul O'Rear is part of the Help 3 team and assists both internal and external customers with all things Help. This replaces the old Help 3 MSDN Blog.
    • Kimberly Wolk - Responsible for online and offline help experience.
    • Kathleen's Weblog - Kathleen's McGrath's is part of the Visual Studio documentation team.
  • Twitter: Help 3 - The help team also run a twitter feed.
  • MSHelpViewer Facebook Group - Run by the MVPs and Help Dev team.

Help Tools

MSHC Migrate - A free utility by The Helpware Group

Migrate your Help projects and help files to the new .mshc (MS Help Container) help file format. 
This utility is part of FAR HTML v5 shareware. Free for personal use, experimenting etc.
The utility was commissioned and built in partnership with Microsoft.

• mshcMigrate home page

H3Viewer - A free help viewer by The Helpware Group

An alternative viewer which gives you a DExplorer type interface with full TOC, Index, Bookmarks, multi-tabs etc. Building a viewer is almost trivial now with the Help 3 API. The web site also contains code snippets and documentation to assist you in building your own viewer.

• H3Viewer home page

Authoring Tools

Helpware: FAR HTML 5 (Shareware)

FAR HTML v5 can edit help topic meta tags. TOC and Index topic meta tags can be edited visually in the FAR TOC & Index editor.

• FAR HTML 5 & MS Help Viewer 1.0 | Screen shots
• Download FAR - Download the free trial.

3rd party tools that support Help Viewer 1.0

See Paul O'Rear's TheHelpGuy Site for an up to date list :

• http://blogs.msdn.com/b/thehelpguy/archive/2010/01/26/help-authoring-tool-hat-support-for-help-viewer-1-0.aspx

News & Announcements

• Jan-2008: Help 3 is Announced
  April Reagan [MS] a Program Manager blogs about a new Help team formed to replace MS Help 2. See April Reagans's Weblog.
• Apr-2009: Help for VS 2010
  WinWriters 2009 Conference - MS announce that Help 3 will first ship with VS 2010 Beta 1 but will be Online mode only. VS 2010 Beta 2 release will ship the full Offline/Online experience and allow 3rd party help integration to be tested.
• May-2009: Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 released
  Help 3  is officially out there.  Only the online version at this stage. Checkout the Loband option.
• July-2009: Change in MS Help team
  April Reagan moved to the MS Surface team, and Paul O'Rear joined the MS Help 3 team. Paul has been with MS for 7 years. Before that he was an MS Help MVP.
• Oct-2009: Microsoft Help Viewer
  Paul O'Rear [MSFT Help PM] told the Help MVPs that VS 2010 Help would be known as "Microsoft Help Viewer 1.0" (we had "MS Document Explorer" in VS 2002/2003/2005/2008).
• Nov-2009: VS 2010 Beta 2 Available
  Download beta 2 here. Our first look at VS 2010 Help. Help is limited but still lots of interesting stuff to see. See Rob's notes here on the Beta 2 Help release. Not much for integrators at this stage.
• Nov-2009: Help 3 video on Channel 9
  Channel 9 video of Ryan Linton [Lead PM] talking about Help 3 beta 2. Thanks Kathleen!
  
   
• Feb-2010: TheHelpGuy Blog
  New MSDN Blob by Paul O'Rear The Help Guy replaces old Help 3 Blog.
• April-2010: MS Help Viewer 1.0 ships with VS 2010 RTM
  10am PDT, 12th Aril 2010. VS 2010 RTM ships. Get the free Helpware mshcMigrate tool.
• April-2010: Microsoft release Help Index Power Toy for VS 2010
  Ryan Linton's HelpViewerKeywordIndex VS 2010 extension provides Help Index & Search embedded inside the VS IDE. 
• May-2010: Microsoft release Help Viewer Power Tool (Beta)
  A viewer with simple TOC and full Index. Run embedded in browser or standalone. Read more...
• Sept-2010: Help Viewer 1.0 SDK released
  Dig deep into HV 1.0. Lots of useful documentation + some C# code.  Read more...
• March-2011: Visual Studio 1.1 is now available. It contains Help Viewer 1.1 in which the main change is a new standalone viewer. So help no longer displays in a browser.