fwd: What's new with NetHelp

[Bill Bledsoe <Bill -dot- Bledsoe -at- CMS-STL -dot- COM>]

Gang,

I'd cc'd in the NetHelp team at Netscape yesterday about our discussion
on HTMLHelp vs. NetHelp.  They wrote me back... and after clearing it
with them.. I thought I'd share their response with the list.

Happy reading!

Netscape NetHelp Team wrote:
>
> Hi Bill,
>
> Thanks for your message.  Yes, we haven't been doing that much marketing--we
> probably should do more.  That probably stems from NetHelp's roots in the
> Tech Pubs dept. here--our team's pubs folks/engineers/usability people at
> heart, not salespeople, and as such haven't been pitching NetHelp as much as
> we could.  But, we like to think that helps us understand what needs to be
> done a little better, and be closer to the folks that use and author NetHelp.
>
> We are trying to get out to some Technical Communications/Web conferences to
> share our progress.  We're giving a seminar at the next Help University
> conference in April, and will be at the STC Annual Conference in May.
> We'll also update the SDK and our external site soon with more information.
>
> As for what's new, here's the major happenings (basically, bullets from a
> presentation we gave a couple of weeks ago).  Most of these are being built
> into/for Netscape Communicator, and so won't be available on older Navigator
> versions.  However, we are testing the ToC/Index bits in Nav 3.0.  These
> guys are either done now or will ship with Communicator.
>
> nethelp: URL designator
>           Provides an easy way to call NetHelp from HTML, Java,
>           JavaScript, or native applications
>           Allows Web-based NetHelp to use the project file parser
>           built into Navigator
> Table of Contents
>           Expanding/collapsing ToC
>           ToC updates as you navigate through the help content, so
>           you always know "where am I?"
> Keyword Index tools
>           Author-defined index markers in HTML content
>           Index generator scans through content files and makes
>           the index
>           Index displays keywords
> JavaScript Button Control
>           Easy way to make "real" buttons in JavaScript
> HTML Layers and Absolute Positioning
>           Stack layers of HTML
>           Place blocks of HTML exactly where you want them
>           Provides popup windows, animated blocks of text or
>           graphics, and translucent overlays
> Added authoring tool support
>           ForeFront
>           GuideWorks
> JavaScript Style Sheets
>           allows text formatting "on the fly"
>           works with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS1)
> Text Find function
>           Find text string within help content frame
> Print function
>           Print HTML within help content frame
> Secondary Windows
>           author-definable
> Updated NetHelp SDK
>
> And here's the bullets from the "Coming Real Soon" slide:
>
> Futures:
>
>      Java API to NetHelp
>           allow Java applets/applications to call NetHelp
>           truly cross-platform application deployment
>      Full-text Search
>      Improved Table of Contents, Index tools
>      Improved content authoring
>      Compilation/Compression...
>
> Hope this helps,
>
> The NetHelp team.
>
> ======================================================================
> Netscape HTML Help Team
> nethelp -at- netscape -dot- com

--
************************************************************
Bill Bledsoe
Senior Technical Writer - CMS
St. Louis, MO
Bill -dot- Bledsoe -at- cms-stl -dot- com or intlidox -at- anet-stl -dot- com
webmaster: St. Louis Chapter - STC <www.stc.org/region6/stl>

"The Internet is the first thing that
humanity has built that humanity doesn't
understand,"    Eric Schmidt, CTO Sun  10/18/96
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