Agora Software announced the release of new versions of it Help Editor and Help Generator add-ins for Visual Studio.Net Visual Basic 6, and Microsoft Access. Help Generator’s modern, user-friendly IDE lets software developers, software publishers, and microISVs create CHM help files, browser-based help, and printed user documentation, quickly and easily. With its powerful add-ins, Help Generator can automatically create help files for many applications.
Help Generator includes the built-in help editor, which uses the familiar Word 2010-style ribbon, and offers HTML editing via a WYSIWYG interface. The software is billed as “genuine single-source publishing” and also includes development tools to find and fix broken links in the help text, table of contents, and index. Help Generator lets the user create text and images once, and publish to CHM, browser-based files, and print.
Technical writers can use the Help Screen Capture tool to automatically generate help pages using the images and text pulled from the active application. Help Screen Capture builds complete web pages using the application’s forms, and is easily customizable. In addition to using the Help Screen Capture tool to document new software, the tool can also be used to capture information from legacy software, for incorporation into specifications for new software.
The family of help generation products includes three add-ins that can automatically generate descriptive help pages with titles, screenshots, image maps, and sections for all controls. Each of the add-ins works with either Visual Studio .NET, Visual Basic 6, or Microsoft Access application files, and build help pages automatically. All pages are in standard HTML/XHTML format, allowing authors to easily fine-tune them.
Agora offers both standard and enterprise versions of the Help Generator package, with pricing starting at $199 up to $399, and a trial version can be downloaded from the company’s website. Visit the Help Generator website, or read the complete press release.
