Help+Manual is the most popular authoring tool for writing and publishing help and technical documentation in multiple formats.
While it is as easy to use like Word, Help+Manual gives you the full power of a true WYSIWYG XML editor. You can focus your energy on writing and immediately get productive!
This is combined with powerful features for editing documentation files, including full support for multimedia and complex modular projects. Some of the power features are:
в–є Multi-channel publishing – this includes all standard Windows help formats, from Microsoft HTML Help to Webhelp to Visual Studio Help, Adobe PDF, Microsoft Word documents and ePUB e-books – the standard format supported by the Apple iPad – as well as Amazon Kindle.
в–є Responsive Webhelp – Webhelp is a context-sensitive format and allows seamless integration of the documentation into your website. This output format can be highly customized and displays equally well on desktop and mobile devices.
в–є True single source – all publishing formats supported by Help+Manual are generated from the same project. This means you only have to edit your help and documentation once. Forget about the nightmare of “converting” your documentation every time you change anything.
в–є Multi-user editing and team authoring – multiple authors can work on the same project at the same time. No databases or additional server components are required.
в–є Version control, remote editing – Help+Manual has active support for Subversion, Microsoft Team Foundation Server and Microsoft Visual SourceSafe compatibles.
в–є Translation – projects are 100% XML and can be translated directly by tools like SDL Trados (configuration files are included).
Joseph C.
Advanced user of Help & Manual
★★★★★
My Go to For Help Files and Documentation and Guide-Books
What do you like best?
Both reliable (crash-proof) and intuitive. I have been working in outline form since college and this program pulls together massive help file and documentation projects with ease. Being able to write it once and use a few compile directives to hid things that are not needed in say a PDF manual make publishing simple and fast.
Reliability is important to me because crashed programs are frustrating. I have never lost work in this product in 15 years. I can't recall locking it up or being stuck either. Confidence follows.
What do you dislike?
Updates of the enhanced template skins that you customize can be tricky when the skin template is updated by the vendor later. I have a cheat-sheet for what I need to change to tweak those enhanced templates for my custom settings. But this is high-end user stuff and a minor inconvenience.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
Ease of use, features, reliability and cost all come to mind in selecting technical writing software for F1 help, manuals and related documentation. The output formats are just a few clicks and the results speak for themselves.
What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?
Certainly a great tool for in--program F1 help, but then I can export this to PDF user's manuals in seconds. I use some custom directives (IF statement stuff) to hide certain elements that are not needed in a PDF manual. We have an industry guide that is built with this using visual links and menu options built with JS menu tools. and it looks like and runs like a program. We've even put some of that into on-line Web-Help by just publishing to Web-Help. Easy for sure.
Review source: G2.com
