Specialist training on
User Assistance
and eLearning

Help & Manual Training:
Help & Manual 5 Foundation/Intermediate

Who is the Help & Manual training for?

This foundation training course enables novice and intermediate users of Help & Manual 5 to use the full range of key features with confidence. No previous experience of working with Help & Manual is required—however, familiarity with the Windows operating system (2000 or later) is a prerequisite.

For students with previous experience of using Help & Manual 5 or earlier versions, the course can be customised to focus on particular areas of the product that you wish to learn more about.

How will I benefit from this Help & Manual training?

After taking the training course, you will be equipped to use Help & Manual 5 more efficiently and effectively, and to maximise the benefits of this powerful Help Authoring Tool. You'll learn how to achieve professional looking Help and printed documentation from a single source, and will discover a range of tips and tricks that will enable you to save time. You'll also be equipped to exploit some of the more advanced and powerful features of the tool, such as Skins and HTML Templates.

Training course duration

Standard Foundation/Intermediate training course:	Two days
Custom training course (Foundation/Intermediate/Advanced level):	One to three days, depending on your objectives and previous experience, and the level of the course

How is the Help & Manual training delivered?

This training course is delivered in the following three ways:

Hands-on classroom training for groups of up to eight students at your own place of work
One-to-one coaching in Ringwood, Hampshire, UK
Web-based coaching as a series of 90-minute instructor-led interactive sessions

Help & Manual training course outline

Collapsed Key Help concepts and fundamentals

What makes an online Help system effective and easy to use?
Overview of the online Help project life-cycle
Planning an online Help system
Comparing and contrasting the various output formats
- Microsoft HTML Help
- Webhelp
- Visual Studio Help
- e-Book
What is a Help & Manual project?
Difference between compressed and uncompressed projects
Important Help & Manual concepts

Collapsed Guided tour of the Help & Manual user interface

Ribbon-based interface and toolbars
Application button
Project Explorer
Topic Tabs
Configuring the user interface
Navigating a Help & Manual project

Collapsed Creating a basic project

Creating a new project
Adding new topics
Creating a table of contents (TOC) structure
Editing topics and their properties
Importing HTML files
Importing Word documents
Organising topics within folders

Collapsed Working with styles and style sheets

Understanding Text and Paragraph Styles
The principle of inheritance
Creating and modifying custom styles
Working with list formatting

Collapsed Adding navigational elements

Three different ways to insert hyperlinks

Collapsed Working with images

Selecting the best image file format for your needs (.GIF, .JPG, or .PNG)
Understanding the Project Search Path
Capturing and resizing screenshots
Shortcuts for inserting images
Adding hotspots to images
Inserting video

Collapsed Creating an Index

A comprehensive strategy for indexing your topics
Adding keywords to topics as you're creating them
Capturing and resizing screenshots
Using the index tool
Tips and shortcuts for indexing more efficiently

Collapsed Working with tables

Creating and editing tables

Collapsed Generating and publishing your Help output

Setting options for HTML Help and Webhelp
Setting up a default HTML Template
Generating (compiling) the Help
Producing reports for project management
Practical strategies and tips for fixing broken links

Collapsed Exploiting Skins

Understanding the concepts of Skins
What changes when you apply the supplied Skins
Creating a new custom Skin

Collapsed Re-using content

Working with Variables
Overriding the values of variables using Skins
Working with Snippets
Working with Conditional Text and Build Types

Collapsed Context-sensitive Help

Understanding the principles of context-sensitive Help
Working with programmers to plan context-sensitive Help
Creating a Map file
Importing a Map file
Assigning Map IDs to topics

Collapsed Working with the Print Manual Designer

Introduction to the Print Manual Designer user interface
Understanding how to work with bands
Creating and modifying tabs

Introducing your trainer

No-one has a better track-record of teaching authors to create Help systems within the UK and Europe than Matthew Ellison. Matthew has 24 years of experience as a practising user assistance professional in the software industry, and is a Certified Help & Manual Professional Trainer. He is a part-time lecturer for Portsmouth University's MA Technical Communication course, and is a qualified teacher (PGCE) and Certified Technical Trainer. Matthew has published articles on Help & Manual, including: