Context-Sensitive Help in NetHelp

NetHelp, Doc-To-Help’s browser-independent Help format, supports context-sensitive Help that can be used many ways: on web pages, in web applications, and in client applications on any platform written in any programming language. You can show NetHelp topics in a frame inside your application window or in a separate browser window. You also have control over what parts of the Help system you want to expose to the user. You can show topic text without navigational frames, or you may want to include full NetHelp navigation with the Contents, Index, and Search tabs.

NetHelp context-sensitive Help uses the same context IDs assigned to topics in your project as do the HTML Help targets. See Context-Sensitive Help.

To call NetHelp from your application or web pages, use one of the D2H_ctxt.* source files provided with Doc-To-Help; they define the ShowHelp function needed to enable context-sensitive Help .

Note The D2H_ctxt.* files are installed by default in the C:\Program Files (x86)\MadCap Software\MadCap DocToHelp 6\Context-Sensitive Help folder.

Unless you need to change the functionality, do not modify the D2H_ctxt.* file. Simply add it to your application or web pages as it is. It is necessary to call the ShowHelp function in all environments. This function is all you need to enable context-sensitive NetHelp. It is implemented in different programming languages for different environments:

Application

Language

File

For More Information…

Web applications and web pages

JavaScript

D2H_ctxt.js

Function ShowHelp in JavaScript Web Applications and Web Pages

Windows client applications

C#

D2H_ctxt.cs

Function ShowHelp in Windows Client Applications

VB.NET

D2H_ctxt.vb

Samples demonstrating how to use context-sensitive Help with NetHelp in each of these environments can be found in the C:\Program Files (x86)\MadCap Software\MadCap DocToHelp 6\Context-Sensitive Help\Samples directory. For each sample, start by opening the files below, then run the program, if necessary, and follow the instructions listed on the page:

  • CSharp CSharp.csproj

  • VB.NET VB.NET.vbproj

  • WebPages index.html

If your programming language is not listed above, you can still use NetHelp context-sensitive Help if you translate the code of the D2H_ShowHelp function to the language you are using. See NetHelp-supported Parameters.