Introduction to online help development

Armada are experts in developing online help for software applications. It is our core business, and accounts for over half of our turnover.

Our in-house team of help authors have been developing online documentation for over 10 years. In this time we have developed hundreds of help centres for a wide range of business applications in a wide range of help formats.

In 1997, our help authors worked on a project with Microsoft in what was then the new HTML help (.chm help format). This was the first HTML help project undertaken in the UK. This HTML help system was incorporated into Microsoft software available 'off the shelf' in the High Street. Since then Armada has remained at the forefront of online help development and technologies.

In a typical project, we use a variety of help authoring tools. We make use of help development tools such as RoboHelp and Flare, but also write our own code to incorporate features that are not available using help development tools alone.

Our help authors' experience means that we are aware of the techniques required, the pitfalls and the solutions. In using Armada to develop your online help, you can be sure it is adopting the latest industry standards.

If you are developing a totally new software application, we can author your help for you from scratch. Alternatively, if you have an existing user guides or reference manuals, we can base your online help on these. If you already have online help in a superceded format such as WinHelp, we can convert this to the format you require, protecting your original investment.

If you require documentation in various formats, such as online help and a user guide, you should consider a 'single source' project whereby we can generate all of your documentation from one set of source files. See Help and hard copy from a single source for details.

Please look at our online help samples page to see for yourself examples of help centres we have produced for our clients.