If you are a technical writer or programmer who wants to include online help in a Windows program, on an Internet or intranet Web site, or as a standalone Windows help file, you have several options to choose from. The two leading high-end online help creation software packages are RoboHELP Office, reviewed two months ago in this newsletter, and ForeHelp Premier from ForeFront, Inc. With the release of version 5, ForeHelp Premier has leapfrogged RoboHELP Office and is now the program to beat.

ForeHelp Premier

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ForeHelp Premier 2001 contains the latest versions of ForeHelp and ForeHelp HTML. The former lets you create WinHelp files and the latter HTML Help files. The suite also contains five add-on tools that help speed construction of your help files and integrate them into your programs. Unlike RoboHELP Office, which has largely foregone printed manuals in favor of online help manuals (natch), ForeHelp Premier contains three printed manuals: one for ForeHelp, one for ForeHelp HTML, and the other for the add-on tools. This leads me to my first curiosity: It seems the boxes were created to be too big for the manuals, so the ForeFront people decided to put Styrofoam blocks at either end of the box.

That may sound like small potatoes, but it’s an example of a few things, good and bad, that got my attention right away. Another attention-getter came when I tried to install ForeHelp Premier 2001 on my desktop computer that is a 266-MHz Pentium II with Windows 2000 Server installed. I couldn’t install ForeHelp. The ForeHelp installation engine would stop installation after informing me that all ForeHelp files were already installed. I contacted ForeFront technical support by e-mail and they were very helpful; they even sent me a new CD-ROM to see if my original CD-ROM was the problem, but it wasn’t. Kudos to the ForeFront technical support for their help, but it’s clear that ForeHelp Premier 2001 is not yet network-capable.

I installed ForeHelp Premier 2001 on my Dell 750-MHz Pentium III notebook without any trouble at all. When you start ForeHelp Premier 2001 for the first time, the Quick Start menu lets you get comfortable with using ForeHelp before you actually start using it. The options in the Quick Start menu let you view the latest product information, view PDF guides that give you a "tour" of ForeHelp and ForeHelp HTML, view sample projects, run the New Project Wizard, or open up a blank project.

Like many wizards, the ForeHelp New Project Wizard asks you a series of questions about your help project so when the ForeHelp window appears, the basic characteristics of your help project appear in the window. For example, you can tell the New Project Wizard that you want to create an HTML Help project with Contents as the title of the first page. The topics for the HTML Help project will appear in the left-hand frame and the Contents page will appear on the right-hand side.

No matter what help project you create—WinHelp (3.1 and later), JavaHelp, HTML Help, or InterHelp for creating Web-based help—the ForeHelp window remains the same. Unlike RoboHELP’s dependence on Microsoft Word for its RoboHELP Classic application and a separate application for HTML Help authoring, ForeHelp is an integrated system.

The menu and button bars at the top of the window (and the availability of some menu and button bar options) only vary with the type of help system you’re creating. You can access most ForeHelp functions from the button bar, such as adding pictures, testing your project for errors, and spell-checking your help pages. You can also access the add-on tools, including indexing, troubleshooting, adding help buttons, and adding OLE and Visual Basic support from the menu no matter what help project you’re working on.

Another important feature for technical writers, and one that RoboHELP lacks, is ForeHelp’s support for FrameMaker files. ForeHelp does not provide direct support for FrameMaker files, as WebWorks Publisher does, but ForeHelp will import files saved in MIF (Maker Interchange Format) so you can format them in ForeHelp. If you work with FrameMaker and you’ve had a hard time getting WebWorks Publisher to work for you, ForeHelp is an excellent alternative.

As a technical writer, I look for three things in help authoring software: flexibility, ease of use, and integration with tools I’m already using. On all counts ForeHelp Premier 2001 is at the top of my list. ForeHelp Premier 2001 provides many different types of online help for distribution in a program, on the Internet, or as a stand-alone project. The integration of all help projects in one window makes ForeHelp Premier 2001 much easier to use and manage. Best of all, ForeHelp integrates not only with Microsoft Word but with FrameMaker, which makes ForeHelp a good choice for professional document conversion to online help.

In sum, if you’re looking for a high-end online help authoring program as part of your documentation needs, put ForeHelp Premier 2001 at the top of your list.
ForeHelp Premier 2001
[$849 list]
ForeFront, Inc.
4710 Table Mesa Drive, Suite B
Boulder, CO 80305
800-357-8507
303-494-5446 fax