Microsoft Help 2

MS Help 2 SDK preview is now available via VSHIK 2.1 (Visual Studio .NET Help Integration Kit). VSHIK is designed to allow users to create MS Help 2 based help and (optionally) plug into the MS.VSCC collection (VS.NET/MSDN Help). At this stage VSHIK will only install on systems containing VS.NET. At this stage the only H2 viewers available are the MSDN Viewer (DExplore.exe) and some 3rd party viewers (see below).

Links - Download

MS Help 2 Forum

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MSHelp2

Changes for the users

MS Help is a completely new help system. New file extensions. New API DLLs.
MS Help requires a minimum of MS IE5.0 because of its XML requirement.
Like MS HTML Help 1.x before it, MS Help uses HTML topics, and uses TOC, Index, Search, Favorites navigation tabs, as well as KLinks, ALinks.
MS Help can have multiple indexes. Think of an index as a list of Name - Value pairs. These lists are static in that they are set at compile time.
MS Help Data Services allow you to interface with the help file data via COM interfaces.
Some MS HTML Help 1.x features may not have been implemented in MS Help. Note however you can always use a mixture of HTML Help 1.x and MS Help in your projects. Remember that some features such as HH 1.x Shortcuts will not work outside of a CHM.
MS provide a conversion tool HxConv.exe which does a good job of converting .CHM or .HHP over to MS Help project.
The compiler no longer strips info from source files. And round trip compiles mean that when you decompile a HxS file you get all the original source files back, including the .HxC project file.
You must specify the exact list of files to be compiled into target .HxS help file, unlike HH 1.x which could crawl hyper-links to find files. The H2 file list is kept in a .HxF file. Wild cards such as "*.htm" and "images\*.gif" are allowed.
No more confusion over Binary or Non-binary TOCs and Indexes. They are always stored in the help file as binary.
MS Help collections can be very big. Bigger than MS HTML Help 1.x merged document sets.
Help 2 dynamic filters work on TOC, Index and Search items, and even right down to the paragraph level in a topic file (with some help of JScript). Filters are based on topic attributes attached to each topic.

Help 2 Tools

MVP Robert Chandler is developing FAR and H2Reg - I think the best to make Help 2 at this stage.

MVP David Liske released a little tool in addition to the converter. You can download the CHM-to-HxS converter or a Help 2 Viewer at the following URL's: