Tuesday, June 5, 2007 - Tue, 5 Jun 2007

The good news is that Behold seems to work fine under Vista. It takes about as long to run, and may actually use about 5% less memory than under XP. It loads Notepad okay (for viewing GEDCOM and log files), and Web Update works perfectly.

I still have to try a clean install and see if Operating System calls such as associating file suffixes work. And there are still some Vista Logo Program requirements I’ll have to make changes for.

But the one thing that doesn’t work is the help file. The old Windows help format has been dropped from Vista in favor of the Compiled HTML format (or CHM). There are programs available that will allow you to read the old Windows help format on Vista, but it is really time to change. CHM is compatible with XP and earlier Windows.

My current Help editor, Windows Help Designer, is now several years old and is no longer supported by the Developer. It can produce CHM files, but there are a few deficiencies in the produced file.

So I’ve started looking for an alternative, and one very interesting tool has turned up. It’s called Dr. Explain and it’s unlike other help authoring tools. The way it handles screenshot editing is revolutionary. It could save me a lot of time as I finish up Behold’s documentation during the beta phase.

I’ll evaluate it for a couple more days and then make a decision.