Embedded user assistance: the future for software help?

ALTHOUGH THE BENEFITS of embedded user assistance have been demonstrated by usability studies for many years now, such assistance has rarely been implemented within desktop applications. This is mainly due to a lack of specialist authoring tools and the limited support for embedding provided by Microsoft HTML Help 1.x. However, the proliferation of Web-based applications and the release of Windows Vista have caused many Help authors to reassess their implementation strategy, and embedding assistance within the user interface is a compelling option.