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If you're having trouble reading a Windows 95 help file, select the Options menu and click on Fonts. You'll have a choice of small, medium and large fonts. If you're having problems with the colors, the same menu contains a check item that causes Windows Help to use system colors--except in those cases where the programmer hard-coded in a color scheme.
You can get at the most commonly used functions in Windows Help by clicking the right mouse button anywhere within a topic. That brings up a shortcut menu that includes Annotate, Copy, Print Topic, Keep Help on Top, Font and Use System Colors. If you right-click in a popup (as opposed to a main window) you'll be shown only copy and print.
All the text in Windows Help topics is now live; copying text to the clipboard in WinHelp is the same as copying it in virtually any other Windows application. You select the text you want and either select Copy from the Edit menu or use the Control-C keyboard shortcut. The copy command dialog box is gone.
The graphical table of contents in Windows 95 Help is controlled by a file with the same name as the help file and a .CNT extension. It is in the same directory as the help file. It is a text file, and you can figure out how it works by comparing the text file to the table of contents. You can move things around, change the nesting and more by editing the .CNT file. Before you make any changes, it would be a good idea to back up the original .CNT file.
If you use several help files in conjunction with each other, you can create a single alphabetical keyword list for all of them--even if they were written by different vendors and you don't have the source code. Just edit (or create) a .CNT file with the same name as your main help file and include these two statements:
:BASE base.hlp
:INDEX Base Help=base.hlp
Always back up the .CNT file before changing it.
Even if you're writing a help file for Windows 3.1, you can make it look better in Windows 95. If you have a group of related topics (Monitors, Color and Monitors, Monochrome, for example), separate the main and subtopics with a colon. If you do so, the topics will appear like this when the file is displayed in Windows 95:
Monitors
Color
Monocohrome
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