How to add help to windows forms

Question

I have a fairly simple Windows Forms application that I would like to add 'Help' to.

What I had in mind was a simple one page html page that describes some details about the application. I think I would have to add some sort of browser to the application to display the html page.

Am I missing other options? Looking for suggestions.

Answer 1

Your solution assumes the users of the application have internet access. Is that acceptable?

There is a browser control for forms that allows web page browsing.

If not, consider putting the simple help page as a form in the application itself, like the Help menus in Microsoft Office products.

Answer 2

There is Help class as part of System.Windows.Forms which may give you some options:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.help.aspx

Answer 3

You could put the HTML help pages on disk next to your application. To display a help page, just launch it and let the default browser take care of it:

string appPath = Assembly.GetEntryAssembly().Location;
string filename = Path.Combine(Path.GetDirectoryName(appPath), "help.htm");
Process.Start(filename);

Answer 4

You can also use chm files for your help, these types of files (as well as html files) can be generated from the XML comments in your code. You can then use a help file builder like sandcastle to help generate a chm and/or html help file from your XML comments in your code. If you have XML comments enabled for your project you'll get an extra .xml file that is generated when you build your solution and that is what is used to generate the help file. And then you can just reference that help file from your windows app. This has worked for us!