So How Does It Work?
Process & Product Overview

Creating HTML Help combines Web technologies (HTML, CSS, DHTML) with technical writing skills and graphic design talents in a process that often forces the author to switch from application to application, using different tools for writing, HTML editing, graphic design, interactive scripting….

The best way to get a handle on it all is by walking through the process yourself. In the published book, this chapter presents a high-level view of an entire HTML Help project, from start to finish. This section of the Web site includes the files used in the walkthrough, plus an overview of the process and a chart of the file types used in creating HTML Help .

Note: Don't forget that you must have Microsoft’s HTML Help Workshop on your system in order to create a compiled HTML Help project. The Workshop is available as a free download at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/tools/htmlhelp/.

You may also need an HTML editor; in a pinch, you can write and edit HTML pages in the Windows Notepad or any other editor that produces plain text. Do not use a full-fledged word processor unless you know how to make it save your documents in a plain text format with an .htm extension.