Introducing HelpStudio Lite

Question

The VS 2005 SDK contains a new tool for authoring Help and integrating it with VS 2005. The tool is called HelpStudio Lite. It is lightweight version of the full HelpStudio product, developed by Innovasys.

HelpStudio Lite is recommended for anyone extending VS 2005 - for example, by creating add-ins, controls, or packages.  You will likely also want to author and include Help content with your extensions to VS. You can use HelpStudio Lite to author your content and compile it to the Help 2.5 (hxs) format, so it can be integrated with VS 2005.

The HelpStudio Lite documentation includes details on how to create deployment projects for your content (your hxs files). There are a couple options. One option is to use the Help Integration Wizard to create a VS setup project, which can be compiled into an Windows Installer package (msi or msm).  Another option is to incorporate the InnovaHxReg tool (included with HelpStudio Lite) into your setup.  You can invoke InnovaHxReg to register your content and merge it with existing VS 2005 content.

If you have existing Help 2.x files for VS 2003, you can upgrade them to work with VS 2005 by importing your collection into HelpStudio Lite and then compiling the HelpStudio Lite project.  Similarly, you can import HTMLHelp 1.x (chm) files into HelpStudio Lite projects.

Here are some related links for more information.
HelpStudio Lite Press Release
Visual Studio Extensibility Center
Download the VS 2005 SDK

Thanks,
Jeremy Jones

Answer 1

Is HelpStudio Lite included in the current (October 2005) version of the VS2005 SDK, or is it a feature of the upcoming version (March 2006)?

Dirk

Answer 2

HelpStudio Lite will be installed automatically with the current VS2005 SDK.  Once you've installed the VS SDK, there is a HelpStudio Lite shortcut under the VS SDK item on the Start Menu.

Thanks,
Jeremy

Answer 3

I've used HelpStudio Lite for a month now and I think it's a great tool. However, because it still has huge reliability problems (version 2.1.0.5) I may be forced to switch to another tool. I certainly can't recommend it to anyone.

Answer 4

Hello Rubio,

I'm sorry to hear you've been having problems using HelpStudio Lite. We would be grateful if you could provide us with some information about the nature of the problems you have been experiencing so that we can investigate and address them. Feel free to contact me direct (richard@innovasys.$nospam$com (remove the $nospam$) if you would rather.

Richard Sloggett
Innovasys
http://www.innovasys.com

Answer 5

This thing doesn't work at all don't waste your time

Answer 6

Hello,

If you have encountered any problems using HelpStudio Lite, can you give me some details so that we can assist you?

Richard Sloggett
Innovasys
http://www.innovasys.com

Answer 7

Dose It work wiht the express editions?

 

Becuase I get an error about not having Visual Studio 2005 installed on my computer when installing the SDK...

 

 

Thanks :)

Answer 8

The Visual Studio SDK requires Visual Studio Professional or higher; the Express editions aren't supported.

Answer 9

aaa man, well back to looking,

 

thanks :)

Answer 10

HelpStudio 2 seems to work OK with Internet Explorer.  However, the generated HTML does not work with the Firefox browser.  Some of the links don't work and the output is poorly formatted.  The default templates should work in both browsers.

Other than that, it works well for generating chm files.

Answer 11

Hi progames25,

There is an alternative available for those not working directly within a full VS2005 environment.

1. Go to Microsoft Help MVP Rob Chandler's Helpware.net website to this topic:

"Install VSHIK Without VS.Net":
http://helpware.net/mshelp2/h20.htm#tip

 

2. Take the path to the VS2005 SDK item:

"Unblocking VS2005 SDK (Contains Help 2.x SDK for VS v8.0 2005):
http://helpware.net/mshelp2/h2faq.htm#novsnet2

Please see if using this method solves your problem?

Frank

Answer 12

Hello. I'm using HelpStudio Lite to generate web-based documentation for web-application. After project is built, a separate web page is created for each Topis, it's ok, but is it a way to introduce some kind of navigation or event web-based TOC?

Answer 13

Hello,

HelpStudio Lite is only licensed and supported for the generation of Help 2.x output for integration with Visual Studio 2005. You can create pure HTML output, including a Table of Contents, Index and Full Text Search, using the full version of HelpStudio (http://www.innovasys.com). Let me know if you need any more information on this.

Richard Sloggett
Innovasys
http://www.innovasys.com

Answer 14

The installer package is broken - it is installing some of the Program Files Common components to drive D:

Answer 15

Hello,

 

Can you give me some more information on the installation problems you are seeing - which components are you referring to?

 

Richard Sloggett

Innovasys

http://www.innovasys.com

Answer 16

Hi.

 

When I trying to start a HelpStudio Lite I recive a lot of errors.

And I can not remove\repair the Innovasys HelpStudio Lite via "Add or Remove Programs" !!!

I get the error 1324: "The folder path 'Program Files' contain an invalid character".

HELP ME!!!

Answer 17

Hello,

I have generated a Help CHM file with doxygen. I would like to import it into HelpStudio Lite project.
Is it possible to do it?

Thanks

Jean-Louis