MMHelper lets you link online help, tool tips, status line help, multimedia presentations or business knowledge to the buttons, fields or other components in an existing Windows 3.1 or 95/98 program. You can view the linked information by placing the mouse cursor over the component or clicking the MMHelper button and then the component. You can link to a Adobe Acrobat document, open a file in Microsoft Word or play a Lotus ScreenCam movie.

While MMHelper can open a WinHelp or HTMLHelp file, it can't open a specified topic in the help file. This feature will be available in Version 1.5. It will display the help topic in a window or as a What's This? help pop-up. 

 Using MMHelper

MMHelper is relatively easy to learn and user. It took me just a few hours to check out all the features and become relatively proficient.  To add help to a program you must first select the required interface components. You can do this by selecting the components individually or having the program select all the components. I would recommend selecting the components individually as it may not be possible to interpret the program's name for each component. Since MMHelper lets you give each component a more meaningful name, it may be better to capture each button or field one at a time.    

To create a linked help components, you simply click the Add button and select the type of help component. Your choices include a data or program file, bubble help or status line help. 

Program File - You can select either the exe file for a program or a data file. For example, you can select a HTML file and MMHelper will launch your default browser and display the file.    

Bubble Help - If you select the bubble help option. MMHelper prompts you to enter the bubble help text. You can choose to have the bubble help appear when the mouse hovers over an interface component or display it after the user click the MMHelper title bar icon and then the component. 

Status bar -  The MMHelper status bar can appear just above or below the application window. Your help message will appear in the status bar when the mouse passes over the selected interface component. I would not recommend using the method. Several studies have show that user do not readily notice status line messages because the messages appear outside of the user's focus of attention. 

Assessment

MMHelper is a very useful program and easy to learn software. You don't need to be a software engineer to attach online help to an existing program. But as the screen shot illustrates the icons in the application toolbar appear to be very crude. This could hinder its acceptance as a serious and reliable EPSS tool. 

In my testing the program performed well, but I had some difficulty getting the program to work when I captured all the components in small program. I think the program would benefit from a slightly better looking bubble help window. It would also be great if the program could detect when the cursor was in a data field. This would help in those applications where the users tab between fields.  

You can download a trail version of MMHelper from the ESMMI website.

1999-07-10