advice on buliding browser-based (non CHM) help system

Subject: advice on buliding browser-based (non CHM) help system
From: Andrew Strombeck <amstrombeck -at- yahoo -dot- com>
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2006 14:07:24 -0700 (PDT)

Hello,
I'm new to this list, but have found it a rich resource in the past. Let me apologize in advance for the general nature of this question, but I'm having trouble finding a succinct answer elsewhere.

I'm writing user docs for a browser-based application built in .NET. Since the application is for internal use, the developers have standardized on Internet Explorer.

In lieu of using a full Microsoft CHM file, I want to write help as a series of HTML (or XML) pages. When called, these will display in a floating window that users can access without opening a new browser window (this part is taken care of by the developers, using something called RAD controls).

Each page needs to display in a context-sensitive manner, i.e. when the user clicks a ? button on a form, help will return a topic related to that page. At the top of this page, I want to integrate a simple search that will look through all the help pages in a directory and return a list of pages with matching terms.

I'm using Help and Manual as a development enviroment.Table of Contents isn't terribly important.

I basically need advice on two things:

implementing context-sensitive help without using a CHM file and
implementing full-text search on the directory where I'll store my Help files
Thanks in advance.

Best,
Andrew

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