Online help offers a big advantage over other types of software documentation: context sensitivity. When a user needs to urgently solve a problem, it is not convenient to consult a user manual and locate the relevant section.
Context sensitive online help presents a list of solutions relevant to the current task and is always just a click away.
For this reason, online help has remained a recommended method of user assistance for certain types of software applications (usually the very complex ones), despite looking somewhat outdated when compared to modern user interfaces.
Traditional online help is a comforting resource for the user: easy to navigate due to its prosaic tree structure and search function, easily accessed and hidden, helpful with regard to resolving errors: and always up to date.
I have been supplying complete online help solutions that integrate with web-based or desktop-based software since 2005, and can advise on whether or not this approach is the right one for your product.
