Context-sensitive help

This article is written for software developers who have never implemented context-sensitive help. It explains the concepts and it describes the basic types of context-sensitive help. There is a demonstration application and associated help.

What is context-sensitive help?

Most people are familiar with context-sensitive help, even if they don't use that term. For example, if you click a Help button on a screen or press the F1 key on your keyboard, if the help topic that appears applies to the dialog box (rather than being the first topic in the help), then the help is context-sensitive.

There are two basic forms of context sensitivity:

Field-level context sensitivity. A small item of help appears when you click on an object on a screen. The help is generally just short paragraph that explains the object.
Dialog-level or screen-level context senstivity. A help window appears. Typically, it describes all the objects on the screen. Often, it will also contain procedural information or conceptual information about the dialog box or the screen. Often, there will be links to other relevant topics of help.

Linking the application and the help

A help topic is related to an object in an application by means of a map ID (or context ID). This is just a number. Typically, the object will be a screen or a dialog box, although it can be a button or an entry field, for example.

When a user presses the F1 key or Help button, the application calls the help file, and passes a value that corresponds to the required topic of help. The exact details are, of course, dependent upon the IDE that is used to create the application.

The map ID values are arbitrary. They can be provided by the software developers or by the help author.

Demonstration files

There are three files:

A Word file which contains a form (to simulate a software application). To use the form, you must allow macros to run.
A demonstration help file (WinHelp 2000 format) called sample-context-help.hlp.
A supplementary file called sample-context-help.cnt. This is needed to display the contents list in the help file.

Download a zipped set of files: context-sensitivity-files.zip, 18 KB.

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