Object help for GUIs

Introduction In the common graphical user interface (GUI) environments — Macintosh, PC Windows, and UNIX’s XWindows and OpenWindows — online help haa generally taken two approaches: 1) help systems, separate from the GUI applications, in which users search for information, and 2) balloon help, a Macintosh approach that provides spot triggering of help based on cursor position. Other types of online help for GUIS, such as context-sensitive help, have been developer but they haven’t been commonly used. William Horton, in his Designing and Writing Online Documentation, doesn’t mention any other types of help facilities for GUIS.