The Project Explorer is completely new and it allows you to access the contents of your project just as you would browse the contents of your hard disk with Windows Explorer. See the Introduction and Quick Start Tutorials sections for an introduction to the Project Explorer.

All the settings that used to be located in Project Properties are now accessed in the       Configuration section in the Project Explorer.

The File menu has now been replaced by the Application Button, which opens the Application Menu. Look for all your basic file, input and output functions here. Remember its name, this is one of the most important controls in the new interface and it is referred to constantly in the help.

The Quick Access Toolbar next to the Application Button navigates in your editing history like a browser and provides direct access to the most frequently-used functions. Configure it with the drop-down menu at its right-hand end.

See The User Interface for more details.

This is now called Program Options – you can access it both in the Application Menu and in the View tab.

These are now in the Quick Access Toolbar next to the Application Button and they are blue instead of green.

The menus have been replaced by tabs. You will find your editing and text formatting tools in the Write tab. The tools that used to be located in the Insert menu are also located there.

The editor tabs are still there, they're now below the main editor window instead of above it.

The Index tab has been replaced by the new Index Tool, which you can access in the Project menu.

This section no longer exists. Instead, you have the Table of Contents section with all your TOC entries and the Project Files section where all your topic files are stored. The TOC entries are only links to your topic files.

You can still create topics without TOC entries. To do this you just create a new topic in the Topic Files section instead of in the Table of Contents section.

We now refer to generating your output as "publishing". The old term "compile" is a hangover from the time when Help & Manual only produced Winhelp and HTML Help files, which are generated with the Microsoft help compilers. Help & Manual is now a multi-format tool for technical writers and we felt that the term "publishing" was more appropriate. We still refer to compiling occasionally, but only when we are really talking about the Microsoft help compilers.

The Baggage Files section is now located in Project Files > Baggage Files in the Project Explorer.

The mechanisms for undocking and redocking Help & Manual components have changed. You can now undock and redock just by double-clicking on a window title bar. You can't undock components of the Ribbon interface or the Editor window. However, you can change the position of the tab by dragging it. See Explorer Tips for more details.

You can also undock and redock windows by dragging them to the borders of the Editor window – you can dock components to any side of the editor: top, bottom, left or right.

Help windows are now only relevant for HTML Help (CHM) and Winhelp (HLP). It is no longer possible or necessary to associate a help window definition with individual topics. Help window definitions are now only used for defining the appearance and behavior of the HTML Help and Winhelp help viewers and for displaying topics in external windows with hyperlinks.

To configure the help viewers you just need to edit the definition of the Main help window in Configuration > Common Properties > Help Windows.

Displaying topics in external windows is now achieved exclusively with hyperlinks. You define an additional help window type and then select the help window type in the Insert Hyperlink dialog when you create the hyperlink. It is no longer possible to define a topic that automatically opens in an external window when it is selected in the TOC (this never made sense anyway).

These are no longer defined by the help windows except for the obsolete Winhelp format. Background colors for all HTML-based output formats are now defined in the HTML page template which you can find in Configuration > HTML Topic Page Templates.

This is no longer needed in Help & Manual 5 because there is no longer any internal database that needs to be reorganized. If you save in the uncompressed XML format everything is saved in plain-text files and there is nothing hidden that needs to be repaired. The single-file HMXZ format is really just a ZIP archive and if it ever needs repair you can fix it with any of a large number of ZIP repair and recovery tools – just change the file extension to .zip to perform the repair, then change it back to .hmxz to be able to open it in Help & Manual.

What used to be referred to as "compiling" is now known generically as "publishing". This is more accurate because not all output formats are really run through compilers. We still sometimes talk about compiling when referring specifically to the Microsoft help compilers.

"Browser-based Help" is now known as "Webhelp", which as established itself as the standard term for help viewed in a normal web browser. The old term was always a bit of a mouthful and it was annoying to have to write the entire term whenever we wanted to discuss it.

If you have the Professional version you can now save in two different formats: A single-file compressed format with the extension .hmxz and an uncompressed XML format that saves your project in a directory of uncompressed XML files with a project file with the extension .hmxp.

The Standard version of Help & Manual can only read and write the single-file compressed format.

Uncompressed XML is required for multi-user editing.

You can load and edit multiple projects in the new Project Explorer, which supports Copy & Paste and Drag & Drop between projects. You can also display split views of projects or parts of projects with Explore > Split Explorer in Project > Manage Topics.

If you have the Professional version multiple users can work on the same project at the same time. All users must be using the Professional version and the project must be saved in the uncompressed XML (HMXP) format.

Table styles are available in Write > Styles > Edit Styles. To apply them to a table click in the table and then select Properties in the Table tab. Table styles are dynamic, just like text styles – updating the style automatically updates all the tables formatted with the styles.

Embedded topics are now called snippets and are much more powerful. In addition to topics in the current project you can also insert snippets from external XML files and topics in other projects (provided they are saved in uncompressed XML). You can save both selected text and entire topics to snippet files to create libraries of reusable content.

See Re-using content with snippets for more information and instructions.

When you are working with modular projects you now set the merge method (runtime or compile-time) separately for each child module. This means that you can mix runtime and compile-time (now referred to as "publish-time") merging. In addition to this, child modules inserted in publish-time mode can be edited directly inside the master project.

However, this also means that child modules inserted in runtime mode are only exported to CHM and HLP because only these formats support runtime merging. If you want to export the same modules to other formats you must now insert them a second time and apply suitable build conditions to ensure that they are not exported when you publish to CHM or HLP.

See Exporting runtime modules to other formats in Merge methods for CHM & HLP for details on how to do this.

Help windows are now only relevant for HTML Help (CHM) and Winhelp (HLP). They no longer define background colors for any format except the obsolete Winhelp. Background colors for all other formats are defined in the HTML Page Templates (these colors are also displayed in the editor).

It is no longer possible or necessary to associate a help window definition with individual topics. Help window definitions are now only used for defining the appearance and behavior of the HTML Help and Winhelp help viewers and for displaying topics in external windows with hyperlinks.

To configure the help viewers you just need to edit the definition of the Main help window in Configuration > Common Properties > Help Windows.

Displaying topics in external windows is now achieved exclusively with hyperlinks. You define an additional help window type and then select the help window type in the Insert Hyperlink dialog when you create the hyperlink. It is no longer possible to define a topic that automatically opens in an external window when it is selected in the TOC (this never made sense anyway).

Displaying topics in external windows is now achieved exclusively with hyperlinks. You define an additional help window type and then select the help window type in the Insert Hyperlink dialog when you create the hyperlink. It is no longer possible to define a topic that automatically opens in an external window when it is selected in the TOC (this never made sense anyway).

HTML page templates are now defined separately in the Project Explorer, in Configuration > HTML Page Templates. They can be assigned to topics when you create new topics and in .

Background colors for topics and headers are now defined in the HTML page templates and displayed in the Help & Manual editor. The only exception is the obsolete Winhelp format  – the background colors for Winhelp are still set in the help window definition in Configuration > Common Properties > Help Windows.

In the new Project Synchronizer tool you open the updated original project and then select Synchronize in the Project tab to perform the conversion.

Popup topics are now defined with the Topic Class attribute in or when you are creating the topic file. Popup topics can only be created in the Topic Files section of the Project Explorer.

You cannot create a popup topic in the Table of Contents section and you cannot switch the Topic Class to Popup in the Table of Contents section. (The Topic Class attribute is currently only used for popups but it may be used for other new features in later updates.)

In Help & Manual 4 bookmarks and comments were the same thing. In Help & Manual 5 they are now two separate functions.

Bookmarks are set and used with the Bookmark tool in the Project tab. You can only set one bookmark per topic and they always link to the top of the topic. They are also managed and accessed with the Bookmark tool. Bookmarked topics are identified in the TOC by red "pin" icons.

Comments are inserted with the Comment tool in Write > Insert Object. You can insert multiple comments in a topic but you cannot jump to comments like bookmarks.

The print manual designer for PDF templates has been updated with some major new functions: