Screen shots and feature highlights

The Help & Manual user interface

The user interface of Help & Manual looks very much like a compiled help file: You work with the familiar three-pane window with the table of contents always displayed for navigation. Next to the navigation pane is the topic area - the internal text editor.

Eight output formats

Help & Manual creates eight output formats, ranging from compiled HTML Help to Webhelp, to fully formatted PDF files to XML.

Build conditions - predefined and user defined - allow different content for every output format. User-defined builds can be used to create customized versions of your online help for a client. And if that isn't enough, the export can be fully automized with command line options.

XML Source code editor

Help & Manual 4 Professional can import and export XML. This is a complete roundtrip function, designed for external translation and for import.

Moreover, you can edit topics in XML format directly. The integrated XML editor gives you access to the XML source.

XML export and import currently supports the H&M XML schema. As the XML functionality in Help & Manual evolves, more XML schemas will be integrated here.

Import formats: migration of existing sources

Among the supported import formats are compiled HTML Help, HTML and text files, Winhelp file (source + compiled), Word documents and XML.

To offer a migration path especially for Robohelp users, Help & Manual imports Robohelp X5 (for HTML Help) projects directly.

Customizable HTML templates

The WYSIWYG editor for topics is complemented by an HTML editor for topic templates: topic templates build the "frames" for your topics where Help & Manual inserts the content during help compilation.

Using templates, you not only can fully customize the layout of your help file. It is also possible to export help pages dynamically using variables.

Customizing content with variables

Variables can be used in literally any location in Help & Manual. Using variables, you can customize the content dynamically and even created branded versions of the online help.

Variables are replaced with their actual values during export.

In addition to a list of predefined variables, Help & Manual lets you create as many user defined variables as you need.

Comments and bookmarks

When developing online help, it's often necessary to postpone some details of the online help, that cannot be finished at the moment. Help & Manual helps you to organize such details.

Design time comments are used to insert editor's annotations in topics. These notes are not exported. But how do you find them again?

Every topic with comments is automatically added to an internal bookmark list for easy access. Bookmarks are also visible in the table of contents. Now you can't forget the details anymore, that you scheduled for later revision!

Screen capture and image editor

Impict is the image editor of Help & Manual.
Image editor, huh?

Yes, Help & Manual includes a full-featured image editor! Impict comes with many cool image effects that you typically need when preparing software screenshots for online help.