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Rating: 
Summary: How not to write a help book
Review: First of all, the book assumes that everyone is already familiar with all computer functions. It is extremely user-unfriendly and most examples are inconsistent with the current version. Worse yet, in the examples, seems like many steps are skipped and you have to sort of grope with it for a while. Are there no other books on this topic?
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Summary: Save Your Money!
Review: Help for VB applications is a sick joke to begin. Mr. Wexler took me no closer to writing professional Help Text than I was before spending the money, and time, on this effort.
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Summary: A good book to gain an overall understanding of HTML Help.
Review: I found this book helpful in the sense that it gave me some overall understanding of what can be achieved with HTML Help. As is often the case, this book did not go far enough in providing detailed descriptions of what is possible with the "cutting edge" of HTML Help systems. The long pages of HTML were tedious to read and should have excluded from the printed publication, yet included on the CD-ROM. Regardless, I found the book helpful, well written and worth the purchase price. I know that authoring is not an easy occupation, however I would like to see an advanced book on this same topic from Steve Wexler.
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Summary: Not worth the money!
Review: One star because this appears to be the only book available on the subject. The examples are POOR and incomplete, if they exist at all. There has to be more than this to HTML help.
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Summary: Excellent Book a must for anyone involved in online
Review: Steve and Brent did a faboulos job on this guide. An absolute must for anyone who is moving to HTML Help. Its easy to see why WexTech are renowned as the help experts in the industry.
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Summary: Too little and out of date
Review: The author begins the book by stating "most of it has been written over the last six weeks". Well, Steve, it shows! The book is a glossy overview of the basic features, but is neither thorough nor deep. Pages of HTML code examples do nothing more than state what function is happening here - good luck to a novice that actually has to do something in HTML.The book is based on HTML Help version 1.1, and I wish I had counted how many times it said such-and-such doesn't work yet, but it will in version 1.2 due out in 1998. Well it's the fall of 1999 now, and I downloaded version 1.22 from the Microslop site only to discover most of the book's examples won't work with it. I bought this book because I wanted to begin an HTML Help project at my company. After studying the book and examples, I have revised my plans to avoid HTML Help altogether.
Rating: 
Summary: Specific Topic--Specific Info.
Review: The book has a very specific topic (HTML Help Authoring), which basically means buy the book if you are creating an HTML help file (or if you want to weigh HTML Help versus Win Help for an application). The only problems with the book are actually the same problems with Microsoft's HTML Help Workshop Version 1.1 program. (i.e. Doing certain things kills the program without any clear reason why). One would think Microsoft will probably improve these flaws in later versions of the program. Also, it is a lot cheaper to buy this book and work around the flaws than it is to buy a third party product that does the same thing. Also, the HTML Help Workshop program on the CD is also found on the Visual Studio disk (The HHW.exe program).
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Summary: One Of The Worst Technical Books Ever...
Review: This book is written in a point-and-click, monkey-see monkey-do format. If you follow the steps EXACTLY you will end up with (usually) a working help file with no explanation for what you have been doing. The author even tells you that some of his code "won't run in this version but will in the next" - and most don't. Half of the things I want to know (TOCs, FullText indexes, WhatsThisHelp for VB, etc.) do not have adequate (if any) coverage. It is too bad that the minimum rating is 1 star because I don't even want to give it that. If you are looking for a moron's guide to ineffectual help systems - this is the book for you! Everyone else - save your money for a DECENT tech reference that is worth reading...
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Summary: The book is about as good as the HTML Help Authoring Kit
Review: This book suffers from shortcomings, but to be fair, so does Microsoft's HTML Help SDK. The SDK suffers from a sloppy user interface, modal windows that should be modeless, some unbelievable bugs, etc., and you can see that it has made the book less useful than it could be. Specifically, the book is missing information that users of a reasonably well-debugged application should not need, such as a list of bugs, features never implemented, features that don't work correctly, etc. The other reviews for this book are on the money as to this book's problems. To learn to use HTML Help, I found this book useful, but you must supplement it with information that you can get from web sites that devote themselves to HTML Help issues. These sites point out the bugs and other issues that HTML Help authors absolutely need to know about.
Rating:
Summary: The book is about as good as the HTML Help Authoring Kit
Review: This book suffers from shortcomings, but to be fair, so does Microsoft's HTML Help SDK. The SDK suffers from a sloppy user interface, modal windows that should be modeless, some unbelievable bugs, etc., and you can see that it has made the book less useful than it could be. Specifically, the book is missing information that users of a reasonably well-debugged application should not need, such as a list of bugs, features never implemented, features that don't work correctly, etc. The other reviews for this book are on the money as to this book's problems. To learn to use HTML Help, I found this book useful, but you must supplement it with information that you can get from web sites that devote themselves to HTML Help issues. These sites point out the bugs and other issues that HTML Help authors absolutely need to know about.
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