 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Microsoft Help Viewer" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(January 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
| Microsoft Help Viewer | |
|---|---|
| Developer | Microsoft |
| Operating system | Microsoft Windows |
| Predecessor | Microsoft Help 2 |
| Type | Help system |
Microsoft Help Viewer (HV) is the offline help system (local help) developed byMicrosoft that ships with versions ofMicrosoft Windows including and subsequent toWindows 8, as well asVisual Studio 2010 and its associatedMSDN Library.
Microsoft Help Viewer 1.x supersedesMicrosoft Help 2 which is the help system used byMicrosoft Visual Studio 2002/2003/2005/2008 andOffice 2007. It is shipped with VS 2010. Microsoft Help Viewer 2.x is backwards-compatible with 1.x and is shipped with the operating system as well as VS 2012+.
Although Microsoft Help Viewer was referred to asMS Help 3.x during development, it is a wholly new product and technically unrelated toMicrosoft Help 2. With the growing need for a general Unicode-based help system, has become the default help system forWindows 10.
The HelpPane Viewer is found in Windows 10. The version appears to be 2.3.
Theuser experience for Microsoft Help Viewer 1.x is that topics can be viewed in any installedweb browser – a separate application, such as theMicrosoft Document Explorer included with Microsoft Help 2, is not necessary. The browser-based model is meant to provide a more lightweight navigation, downloading, and reading experience than earlier help-viewer models.
Visual Studio 2010 includes ataskbar applet in the Windows notification area (system tray) that arbitrates between viewing offline help and online help in the browser when F1 is pressed, and resolves help topicURIs to the proper topic page. It also includes a "library manager" application to manage the download, installation and uninstallation of help topics on the system, as well as whether to prefer online help when connected to the Internet.
Microsoft Help Viewer 2.0 uses a COM runtime library, so the taskbar applet is no longer used. The format is unchanged.[1] The runtime API is accessible via .NET dlls used in VS2012 and Windows 8; they are equivalent except for a name change.[2] VS2012 ships a more sophisticated toolkit (HlpViewer and HlpCtntMgr), while Windows 8 only has a one-pane HelpPane program.[3]
Help files from Microsoft Help Viewer have a.mshc file extension. They are ordinaryZip files containing HTML documents. Special meta tags are provided for navigation, and there is support for signing the help bundle.[4]
