Microsoft Help Viewer

Microsoft Help Viewer, also known as Microsoft Help 3, is a help format developed by Microsoft. It is much simplified compared to previous formats, with no project format or compiliation step; it is simply a ZIP file, renamed with the extension ".mshc" ("Microsoft Help Container" ), of the relevant resources, the main help pages being in XHTML. There were two versions, "HV1" (2010 ) and "HV2" (2012 ), which are "basically the same[;] HV2 has a few more meta statements but these wont [sic] break backward compatibility." The major difference between the versions was in the main implementation (and/or API) of the software that read them.

The .mshc file might come alongside a pregenerated search index with the extension ".mshi" ; or also an HTML "Product Manifest file", with the extension ".msha", which specifies the organization of multiple .mshc files. It might also be packed into a CAB file.

Like Microsoft Help 2, which it succeeded, most uses of Microsoft Help Viewer mentioned online seem to extend to documentation of software development tools.

Links

 * MSHelpWiki: Help Viewer
 * Helpware knowledgebase: MS Help Viewer
 * HV1
 * HV2
 * Page on the Microsoft website
 * Microsoft Help Viewer