Views on context sensitive dialogs

Question

I recently had a discussion about the use of contextual help in applications with my colleagues and the argument was if there is a need for it these days or if it's something that many companies do but does not actually have any significant benefit to the end user. Would we be better off having just pdf files or chm files without any context sensitive help in our applications? I was just curious as to what other developers think about it, primarily because context sensitive help is a bit of pain to set up and especially if you depend on a small number of developers.

Answer 1

As I see it, most applications seem to provide one topic per screen.

If you see a phrase that is not clear in a dialog, you want to be simply able to press F1, and be in the topic.

But of course, the commenters are also right. If it considered a chore, and that topic consists out of a screenshot of the form and the exact same texts mechanically repeated, it won't be any help.

But then of course, the manual won't be any more help when created with such attitude either.