Embedded Help

What's Covered

I have no first hand knowledge of embedding help in an app but I was kindly provided with the information below. I shall be grateful for any feedback but please do not ask for my assistance as this is not my area.

For Desktop Apps

Most IDEs offer a component like WebViewControl. Usually, that is a “pane” that is hosting the Internet Explorer or Edge. A developer can then load any web page into it. There might be limitations compared to a “full browser” (especially as the old control was Internet Explorer-based). The newer control for .NET WinForms and WPF Apps is based on Edge (see some info here).

Browser-Based Apps

You can define an iframe as a placeholder to show your online help.

Example: “hello.html” as the “container” html file representing your web app.

Note that the “html” and “body” elements need to have a height specified (e.g., 100%) – otherwise, the iframe becomes very small. In this example, the iframe shows one of your demo pages. Alternatively, you can also embed any other local file.

You have a container file, say “hello.html”

In this example, pulling the local file D:\inset.html.

Of course, if you want to make it context sensitive within the web app, some more logic is needed. You might need a JavaScript in your container html page to catch something like an info  icon , its ID, and then load the fitting help file into the iframe. But the same basically applies to desktop apps. Just that you would not use CSH to open a CHM file but instead load the corresponsing html page into the WebViewControl.