Microsoft Help 2.x is a proprietary format for online help files, developed by Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

 and first released in 2001 as a help system for Visual Studio .NET (2002)

Microsoft Visual Studio

Microsoft Visual Studio is an integrated development environment from Microsoft. It is used to develop console and graphical user interface applications along with Windows Forms applications, web sites, web applications, and web services in both native code together with managed code for all...

 and MSDN Library

MSDN Library

MSDN Library is a library of official technical documentation content intended for developers developing for Microsoft Windows. MSDN stands for the Microsoft Developer Network. The MSDN Library documents the APIs that ship with Microsoft products and also includes sample code, technical articles,...

.

Microsoft Help 2.x is the help engine used in Microsoft Visual Studio

Microsoft Visual Studio

Microsoft Visual Studio is an integrated development environment from Microsoft. It is used to develop console and graphical user interface applications along with Windows Forms applications, web sites, web applications, and web services in both native code together with managed code for all...

 2002/2003/2005/2008 and Office 2007. Help files are made with the Help 2.0 Workshop (VSHIK), a help authoring tool

Help authoring tool

A Help Authoring Tool or HAT is a software program used by technical writers to create online help systems.-Functions:The basic functions of Help Authoring Tools can be divided into the following categories:-File input:...

. The default viewer for Help 2.x files is Microsoft Document Explorer, and there are several third-party viewers available such as H2Viewer and Help Explorer Viewer.

Visual Studio 2010 uses a new help engine, Microsoft Help System

Microsoft Help System

Microsoft Help Viewer 1.x is the offline help system developed by Microsoft that ships with Visual Studio 2010 and its associated MSDN Library....

.

History

• March 2001 - Microsoft
  Microsoft
  Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
  
   announced Microsoft Help 2.x at WritersUA (formerly WinWriters) conference.
• January 2003 - Microsoft decided not to release Microsoft Help 2 as a general Help platform. Help 2 remained a Visual Studio Help integration tool.
• August 2003 - Borland
  Borland
  Borland Software Corporation is a software company first headquartered in Scotts Valley, California, Cupertino, California and finally Austin, Texas. It is now a Micro Focus subsidiary. It was founded in 1983 by Niels Jensen, Ole Henriksen, Mogens Glad and Philippe Kahn.-The 1980s:...
  
   have released C# Builder
  CSharpBuilder
  C#Builder, from Borland Software Corporation, is a computer program that allows programmers to create Microsoft Windows and Web applications for the Microsoft .NET Framework using the programming language C#....
  
  . Documentation is all in Microsoft Help 2 format and displayed in Microsoft Document Explorer.
• December 2005 - Microsoft continues support of Help 2 by releasing the Help Integration Wizard which is Visual Studio 2005 compatible.
• December 2006 - Office 2007 is released and uses Microsoft Help 2. The Office help viewer is a custom viewer that can only view Office 2007 help.
• April 2009 - Microsoft
  Microsoft
  Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
  
   announced at 2009 WritersUA conference that Microsoft Help System
  Microsoft Help System
  Microsoft Help Viewer 1.x is the offline help system developed by Microsoft that ships with Visual Studio 2010 and its associated MSDN Library....
  
   1.x (development name was MS Help 3) will ship with Visual Studio 2010.

File format

A Microsoft Help 2.x file has a ".hxs" extension. A compressed .HxS help file (help title) is compiled from a set of topic pages written in a subset of HTML

HTML

HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....

, a .HxC main project file, an .HxF include file, a .HxT table of contents, a .HxA attribute definition file, and a number of .HxK indexes (keyword Index, NamedURL index, optional associated and context links indexes).

Applications

This format was originally intended only for the help system used by Visual Studio .NET 2002 help, MSDN Library and TechNet, but now it is used in Office 2007 and some IDEs

Integrated development environment

An integrated development environment is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development...

, such as Borland Developer Studio.

See also

• Microsoft WinHelp
• Microsoft Compiled HTML Help
• Microsoft Help System
  Microsoft Help System
  Microsoft Help Viewer 1.x is the offline help system developed by Microsoft that ships with Visual Studio 2010 and its associated MSDN Library....
  
  

External links

• Microsoft Help 2.x
• MS HELP 2.x Info
• Modifying the Documentation - instructions on how compile/decompile Help 2 documents