Windows help files
In the old days, Help wasn’t trivial, but it’s possible: generate some funky.rtf file with special tags, run it through the compiler, and you have a WinHelp (.hlp) file that works really well indeed.
Then Microsoft decided that WinHelp would no longer be hip and cool, and switched to CHM, to the point where they actually stopped WinHelp from Vista.
Now CHM may be nice, but anyone who tried to open the .chm file on the web will know that the nice "Webpage navigation has been canceled" screen caused by security restrictions.
While there are ways to make CHM work offline, this is hardly a good choice because when the user clicks the Help button they need help and don't need to do any funky settings
Bottom Line: I find CHM completely unusable. But with WinHelp not an option anymore, I wonder what alternatives are there, especially when it comes to integrating with my application (i.e. there are functions for WinHelp and CHM that allow you to jump directly to the topic)?
PDF has a flaw in requiring Adobe Reader (or one of the lighter ones that not many people use). I could live with this observation as it is the standard now, but can you reliably tell to navigate to a given page / anchor?
HTML files seem to be the best choice, then you just have to deal with different browsers (CSS and stuff).
Edit: I'm looking to create my own help files. As a fan of the "No install, just fetch and run" philosophy, I have had this problem many times in the past because many of my users are running it from the web, which is exactly what causes this problem.
So, I'm looking for a more reliable and reliable way to provide help to my users without needing to code a different help system for every application I make.
CHM is a really good format, but this security property makes it unusable because the help system is supposed to provide assistance to the user and not create more problems.
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Yes, at some point they want to add behavior to their help files, making it a security issue and guessing what's going on, often worse than the threat.
Either it is too simple or too complicated and replaced with something new without worrying about backward compatibility.
If you want it to be very simple and build over the centuries, go for .TXT
You haven't specified what your apps are coded, so it depends.
If it's a web application, plain HTML would be the best choice, you don't need any special functions or javascript for the help file, so browser independence should be simple. But also for desktop applications HTML, on-or or offline are often used with good results.
PDF is a generic generic solution and yes you can navigate to specific pages, see this answer. Every computer (or should) have one client or the other installed, I wouldn't bother with that. I myself never choose Acrobat Reader, faster, thinner and often better solutions are available, my favorite is Sumatra .
I'm sure .Net applications have their own help system (no experience here) and many languages have options to display tooltips, windows or pages by either pressing a hotkey (F1) or clicking some dialog management.
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