Help Crafter

I actually managed to hit my head against Apple's help system wall long enough to get a single-html-file help bundle working for my new mac application. Then I found help crafter. My help bundle is now _so_ much nicer. And I have confidence I'll be able to use the anchors to have the help buttons in my app windows open appropriate help. I also used the "export as html" feature to put the same manual on my website. I'm also pleased about the "free trial version". I was able to get my help bundle and html working (with the "trial version footer") before spending my $40. That's reassuring.

I'd given up on Apple Help, because the documentation on it was sparse and nigh-unusable. Help Crafter is how it should work. It does what it is supposed to do, does it easily and well, and it's why my app has a help system. My only feature request would be to be able to set up the menu assistance guides, but that's not even close to critical.

Thank you for this App !! When I finished my program, I knew it would be great to make use of the Apple Help to make a more professional look. However, I could not make sense of Apple’s (scant and old) documentation. This tool is just what I needed. And, yes, the “Help” gave me enough information to use it properly AND get it into my App. An inspiration as to why is it so important to make good “Help” content : )

The macOS help system is notoriously quirky and not as well documented as it could be. Help Crafter has a few little quirks of its own, but for the most part it greatly simplifies the process of creating and maintaining high quality help for an app. It feels like a very simple, streamlined, specialized word processor which makes it almost ideal for putting the maintenance of help documents into the hands of technical writers, directly.

The product has a good help section, as it should. I picked that apart, a little, just to learn. The developer is responsive. As for the application, its intuitive with very little learning curve. The developer has a trial offer, and because i was skeptical, i went for it. However,I recommend you just buy it. It took a little effort for the trial version’s cache to be purged, that was the only bummer,..no biggee though. The purely html option will be very useful for web based support files as well. This product brought authoring of a help system down to a manageable level, you don’t have to write your own css, html, plists, etc… With this tool It took a day to develop a help book (first draft) and add it to my application. SUCCESS!

Just purchased and installed off the App Store. Immediately I am unable to create any pages in the app. I constantly see crashes like "[__NSCFConstantString _getBlockStart:end:contentsEnd:forRange:stopAtLineSeparators:]: Range {2, 0} out of bounds; string length 0". The application would be wonderful if it worked, and I look forward to an update which runs on macOS Sierra so I can revisit this review. But until then I cannot in good conscience give this more than one star.

I had tried some others in the past that I don’t think are even available today, and was dissapointed in them. HelpCrafter was a timely godsend for our sophisticated App on Mac, containing about 200 help pages. It’s a great product that will save you oddles of time in creating and producing a HelpBook and is well worth its reasonable price. We found a few minor flaws, but could work around them, and the author is working to fix those. It handles all the things you need, including anchors, keywords, abstracts, indexing, links, etc., and will produce a help bundle for inclusion in your app. It also does HTML output for the web. I highly recommend this product for anyone who needs to create a HelpBook.

The easiest way I found to quickly compose and generate Apple Help bundles. My past review concerns have been addressed in the latest version which makes me very happy with this app.

Writing help for Mac apps used to be a real pain. This tool makes it a breeze - it’s a must have development tool for all Mac developers.

Help Crafter is off to an excellent start. We’ve been waiting for years for this — it is surprising how few tools there are for authoring Apple Help. While there is room for improvement, it gets 5 stars for how responsive the developer is to feedback and for its active development. We look forward to using for years to come. An essential tool for developers.