A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Windows Vista. I didn't plan to write any more about Vista, but as I've started to use Vista, I noticed that help didn't work in some of the applications I installed. I started searching for information and actually discovered that Microsoft has removed the support for WinHelp. Very stupid. Seems Microsoft has lost touch with reality.
WinHelp is a small program other programs use to display help information (activated when you press F1). Yes, WinHelp was old and outdated. It was actually introduced back in 1990 with Windows 3.0 and there are now more advanced ways of making help files. BUT, there are many old but useful pieces of software that will not work on Windows Vista because WinHlp32.exe have been removed. A full Vista installation is more than 10 GB. WinHelp is 277 KB. That's something like 0.003 per cent.
Microsoft says software developers should rewrite their help files and use HtmlHelp instead because it's much better. Well, yes it's better, but what about people who have very useful software they frequently use, but the software vendor have gone out of business? May be this is a way to try to force people to buy new software? Doesn't Microsoft realize that some software are still as useful as when it was written ten years ago?
There may be a solution in the future. Microsoft says they consider to make WinHelp available to Vista users as a download. That's good but it had been even better if it was installed as standard. May be Microsoft has started to realize they have done something that is not too clever...
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