Connecting Help to Visual Basic

This presentation was last presentaed at the Help-U conference in November 1999. The links on this page will get you to the original Help-U conference material. The content of this session has now been split up and updated, and is available in several white papers which you can download from the Programming page.

Notes

Conference notes and slides for this session (about 28 KB).

Examples

These may contain bugs. Use at your own risk. All examples can be set to call WinHelp or HTML Help. To switch between the two modes, go to the About screen (from the Help menu, choose About). The subclassing example contains a training card Help example in WinHelp, but not in HTML Help. HTML Help training cards are implemented by using an ActiveX control in your HTML files. This is documented in the Reference section of the HTML Help Workshop Help.

• Visual Basic simple example (last updated 1999-11-02, about 1.2 MB) is an example program showing how I think MS would implement Help in a VB program, based on observations of existing programs. This is the buggiest of the examples, as it was created at the last minute.
• Visual Basic plain example (last updated 1999-11-02, about1.2 MB) is an example program showing how to implement just about everything that you can do native to VB or with just WinHelp or HTML Help API calls.
• Visual Basic subclassing example (last updated 1999-11-02, about 1.2 MB) is an example program showing how to implement just about anything in the way of Help calls, as long as you use the slightly modified (from David Liske's version) subclassing module that's included. This is the example that includes training card Help (for WinHelp only).

Resources

Specific resources, and direct links to other resources, about connecting online Help to Visual Basic programs.

• Several API definition modules for the WinHelp and HTML Help APIs (about 55 KB) -- Modules were created by Don Lammers, Dana Cline, and David Liske. Includes a version of David's subclassing module without the tutorial and without the changes I implemented in the conference example. To download the latest version of the subclassing module, click here.
• David Liske's HTML Help site - a must for HTML Help authors and VB programmers who want to hook to HTML Help. You can download David's Help subclassing module tutorial and the latest version of the subclassing from here.
• Programmer's Reference to WinHelp (last updated 1998-03-23, 225 KB) is a collection of Help files created by Don Lammers and Paul O'Rear, containing reference materials for programmers trying to call WinHelp or trying to extend WinHelp functionality.
• WinHelp 4.0 Unofficial Bug and Anomaly List (last updated 1999-09-08, 17 KB) is a collection of WinHelp 4.0 and Help Workshop bugs and other issues originally compiled by Steve Pruitt and subsequently maintained by William Meisheid, Mary Deaton, and now Don Lammers. It is not, in any way, an official bug list.
• Helpful Solutions - Paul O'Rear's Web site
• TANSTAAFL Software - Dana Cline's Site
• HyperTexas - John Daigle. Popup demos and other stuff.
• Online Help Journal - by WinWriters
• WinHelp Survival Kit - by Northern California STC WinHelp SIG