 |
|
One thing
our customers all have in common is that their time is
precious, so they don't
want to learn more than they have to, which is why they
choose Fast Help. Below
is a small selection
of
comments made by
our customers. If you would like to
add your testimonial please e-mail your comments to us
at support@Fast-Help.com and
please include a link to your site if you wish.
Sometimes customers only communicate when there are problems (we feel this way with many of our customers... no news is good news). However, I wanted to tell you that we've had very good results with your product now that we've got it running smoothly. It not only makes a difference in how our customers understand our software, but also gives the software a more professional feel as well as helps us better document the changes and upgrades in our system.
A friend of mine is preparing to market a project-management software designed for the direct mailing industry. I saw his beta version last evening and think your product would be perfect for his needs. I'll be recommending you to him today.
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Best customer service of any software company I have ever dealt with, even my own. Fast reply to all my questions. I purchased FastHelp this spring after trying several other products; I just couldn't beat the price and reliability of the software. Not only do we write all of our software help with FastHelp, we also are compiling manuals for distribution in educational classes and I use it to assist me with writing technical reports. The user interface is well done and easy to understand, the organization structure is easy to navigate. If you write help files for your software, create manuals or just want to have a well organized technical report, you can't and won't go wrong with this product.
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As a developer I know that the one thing that I dislike the most about a software project is having to write the documentation, manuals and user help files. It's not an easy task to write the help and manuals that your end users expect with their software.
Well, I just wanted to share with you the one and only tool that I use for putting documentation together ... Fast–Help. This one program will do just about everything. You write the documentation once and then you can export it in many different formats that most end users are familiar with such as HtmlHelp (.chm), WinHelp (.hlp), PDF's, PocketPC Help, wxWidgets Help and more (check out the online help to see a sample). It can import Office documents easily, handles bookmarks/anchors, keywords are made simple and the list goes on. On the home page there is a 1 minute challenge where you have to create a PDF document in under 1 minute....1 minute (it's not a typo!!).
There is another aspect of Fast-Help that is truly great and it's not even mentioned on their web site and that's the fantastic online service. If you're looking for a program to assist you in writing your user documentation then I highly recommend that you trial Fast-Help and see for yourself. Nothing that I've seen to date comes close to the features included and the price is a lot less than you would expect to pay too.
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We
evaluated all the latest help generation software
and nothing came
close to the ease at which we could start off running
with Fast-Help. We
now use it everywhere we can. Our customers love that
we can produce any
format of help that they ask for from Html Help to
Pocket PC help. We
even have our help available online in the web html
format. If you're
serious about helping your customers this is the solution
we recommend!
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| Every
release we add new features and functions to our product
line. Most
companies would need a documentation staff to keep
up with the level of
changes that we are continually adding to our product.
However, Fast-Help
is so INCREDIBLY easy to use that we just simply update
our documentation
pool with every change and recompile the *.chm when
it's release time.
After using Fast-Help we'd never even consider trying
to tackle the feature
set that you've created. I especially love that it's
just a simple
re-compile to generate PDF manuals of our documentation.
I can't imagine
life without Fast-Help. It gives our software, TransMagic,
an edge in
professionalism and presentation over our competitors
in terms of
documentation too.
We
will always be on maintenance and from one company
to another: we wish
you all success. You deserve it. What a great product.
|
Hi
there! I was given the task of writing a help file
for our new depot
management system (DepotPro). The usual word processing
and website design
packages didn't really give me what I wanted so I hunted
around for some
Help authoring tools. I tried 4 different tools but
found that Fast-Help
was leaps and bounds ahead of the others. It was easy
to install, super
easy to use, and it gave me all the formats I could
possibly want. So we
bought the full version and haven't looked back since.
My help file is now
finished and incorporated into the software so our
users can Help themselves
without having to leave the program! Added to that,
the developers of
DepotPro were so impressed with it the final product
that they now want me
to write help files for their other modules! So thank
you Fast-Help for
creating such a fabulous product, and a very big thank
you to your Sales & Support
team for providing timely, genuine good old fashioned
customer
service. (Thanx Steve!)
|
Thanks
for your prompt reply. The solution resolved the
problem - I even installed it remotely on a terminal
Server Machine and it did the trick. I continue to
be impressed with this programme and congratulate
you on your
obvious commitment to quality and excellent service.
Doug
Coates
eZAN Technology
|
|
|
Just
to say I've now finished writing the Help file
and that Fast-Help has been a joy to work with.
Thanks for your support along the way.
|
Your
personal support has been exceptional, extraordinary,
superior
and notable in this age of vendors who brag of their
'quality tech
support' yet never deliver. Unlike software vendors
who offer 'tech
support' and only deliver a first line response team
that can give
advice on anticipated problems, Fast-Help gives its
customers direct access to the people who actually develop
and support the product. I
was amazed at how, in one day, you identified, fixed
and sent an
update to me for Fast-Help. I had anticipated, based
on experience
with other software vendors, that my problem would
take weeks or
months or never to get resolved - and you did it within
hours. My
congratulations to you and to Fast-Help for this strong
focus on
after-the-sale support. I will be sure to share my
positive
experience with others. :)
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Three
years ago the responsibility of producing help files
for a new software release fell on me. This presented
a problem because I did not have a help authoring
tool, limited time to find one and less time to learn
how to use the tool. Minutes after installing the
Fast-Help trial version, I went from a shopper to
a customer. This product is wonderful. I am still
in awe as to how easy it is to produce manuals, help
files, PDF files, etc. I highly recommend Fast-Help
for its ease of use, reasonable price and outstanding
output. The customer service is excellent – thanks
Gary.
|
I've
got to give you credit, Fast-Help is a really great
tool and I
do not want to be without it. I replaced Doc-to-Help
and have not regretted
it a minute! Thanks for your fine work with Fast-Help!
|
| I
have a fully registered version of eHelp but I
still purchased Fast-Help and prefer it because
it is easy to learn, simple to use and yet very
powerful. I don't see why one would need another
Help authoring
tool.
Cid
Benac
Benco Systems Inc |
|
|
Tri-CAD
Technologies started using Fast-Help about 4 years
ago as
an experimental method of providing a software solution
to our range of
CAD Educational products. Each of our products contains
approximately
500 pages of documentation with associated audio
visual instructions and
detailed illustrations. We had sampled many authoring
tools but found
Fast-Help to be the most effective for our needs
due to its easy
interface, fast compiling and automated documentation
production.
Above
all, we have received such fantastic support that
we went from novice to power user within a very
short space of time
and now use Fast-Help to deliver every product
in our range. Needless to say, we have no hesitation
whatsoever in renewing our subsciption and, in
fact, eagerly await each new upgrade.
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| For
our company, FastHelp has turned out to be a very
wise investment. It
has dramatically reduced the time required to develop
documentation, and
produces packages that both look and perform better.
I
also really appreciate the time you took to prepare
the video tutorials on the changes and new features
... very useful!
Presently,
we have ported the HTML Help utilities for two
of our major applications to FastHelp (http://www.ezprompt.com and http://www.ezcaption.net)
and for the first time, the websites have Help which
mirrors that available in the CHM files.
I'm glad we bought our FastHelp licenses!
|
This
is my follow up testimonial, 2 years ago the company
I work for, Bromcom Plc, purchased Fast-Help at my
request. I thought it was an excellent piece of software
then.
Now 2 years on I still think it is the best and whats
more it doesn't sit on its praise, it keeps improving
even when it looks as if there is no margin for improvement.
We produce attendance software for schools and I have
to supply all the manuals and Help files, Fast-Help
allows me to do this quickly.
Thank you to the whole team.
Christine Andrews
Technical Author
Bromcom Computers Plc
http://www.bromcom.com |
We
had been looking for a centralised documentation system
for over six months for our software platform: FireDaemon
(http://www.firedaemon.com). The products we reviewed
ranged from suitable but extraordinarily expensive
through to laughable in all respects. Fast Help was
the clear winner: simple to install, great centralised
content management allowing us to produce documentation
in the formats requested by our customers, multilingual,
inexpensive and best of all backed up by great technical
support with fast turnaround. Keep up the good work!
Looking forward to future versions!
James Bourne, Sublime Solutions, Sydney AU
http://www.sublime.com.au |
I just
wanted to say what an awesome product Fast-Help is,
it has halved our .chm,
helpfile and documentation file development time which
has paid for
itself in less than a week, the cool features such
as multiform at
output makes our lives so much easier so thank you!
My company is Artemis corporation and we used this
to
produce the help documentation for our RAPID product
(www.mcmsrapid.com).
Tony Sloggett,
Director
Artemis Corporation
http://www.artemiscorp.com |
| My MD said he wanted
something that would produce a Help file and a manual
to save time all round. I looked at several options
including RoboHelp and Fast-Help looked the most interesting.
My company bought it and within two weeks I had taught
myself to use it and had produced a 372 page manual
and online Help file.
The Fast-Help support team are excellent (thank
you Gary) and answer any queries I have instantly.
Well done for producing an easy to use product that
produces HTML, PDF, RTF Word etc what more could
I ask for, (other than a large pay rise).
Christine Andrews
Technical Author
Bromcom Computers Plc
http://www.bromcom.com |
We develop document
management systems and people expect good documentation
and easy navigation with such systems.
We've used your product since the early days. We periodically
look at others (even tried one or two). I have been
extremely pleased with my upgrade to Fast Help.
It has been the easiest to use and most productive
for us and provides the professional look to our documentation.
Single source to generate PDF, HTML and CHM is also
much appreciated.
Congratulations on an excellent product.
Tyrone Coupland
Imaginary Source Limited
http://www.imaginarysource.biz |
Over the last 4
days I have installed at least 10 other 'so called'
help development systems. Only
a couple of the competition you have actually ran without
problems and they are not
just not in the same ballgame' as you, its more a case
that they are not even in
the same stadium. I am an
application developer myself (Delphi) and I know how
important it is to get it
right. Believe me, you got
it right with Fast-Help.
Clive Cooper
Application Developer
http://www.winpe.com |
I spent a good
deal of time searching for an easy to use tool which
would help me create a
HTML and PDF based help for an upcoming release of
one of our products. Since
I am constantly under pressure to get results in
the least amount of time,
I was relieved when I found FastHelp. I was blown away
by how easy it was to create a help file. The One
Minute Challenge was very
effective and changed me from a trial user to a customer.
I highly recommend this
product to others for its ease of use, reasonable
price, and for the outstanding output that it creates.
Tim Hodgson, VP Software Development
ExclamationSoft
http://www.exclamationsoft.com |
I'm
very pleased to find the most excellent help authoring
tool, Fast Help. I've
tried to find a convenient authoring tool for a long
time and evaluated over 10 products, including RoboHelp,
Help and Manual, Help Expert, HelpBreeze, Visual
Help Pro, Visual CHM, Help Kit, Help Studio,
Help Designer from Visage
, MS Help Workshop, and etc. I've evaluated Java
Help too. All of these products have non-English
problems, i.e., Korean
text is not displayed correctly.
With the exception of Fast-Help all of the other
products
I evaluated have image handling problems
when copying and pasting
images from Word documents, web browsers, and so
forth. The
Korean language support is the most important thing
to me as well as image handling
because
alot of specification documents include numerous
images and tables. Your Fast-Help is the best tool
for me.
SungKwang Moon, Program Manager,
Research & Development
NETS Corp.
|
I have been looking
for some time now for an application of this kind as
we develop several applications in VB and .NET.
To have a product like Fast Help will save me many
man hours of time in producing different formats of
the same information.
My developers where really impressed with the user
interface and as you are probably
aware, they are normally very critical of other peoples applications so pass their congratulations on to your
team.
David W Round
Technology Director, eBS TimeGate |
My
use of Fast-Help has been extremely positive. I have
experience using
Robohelp, ForeHelp, Windows Help Designer, HTML-Help,
and a few
other help creation applications.
By far, Fast-Help has the most intuitive GUI and the
most relevant functions of any of them. Within 1 hour
of
getting the program I had
a nice "test" help file created. Within
1 week I've been able to create
4 help files from web sites I've been maintaining.
I would recommend Fast-Help
to anyone serious about rapidly creating quality help
files. You get all the functions
you need without the bloated interface (and cost) of
the
competiting help authoring tools.
Christopher Czernel
Router Solutions Incorporated |
I
appreciate the help & support systems that
are in place here. You guys are a very good advertisment
for your
company. Out of the 5
products that I am evaluating,
Fast Help is now the clear leader - and a good deal
of that is for the support received.
Julian Lyndon-Smith
IT Director
Tessera Group Plc.
|
I have used DotCHM
in support of my software development for 5 years and
found it an excellent tool. I have recently upgraded
to Fast Help, and deployed my first system to a website
yesterday.
Using the Fast Help to develop the help system was
easy and cost effective. Once deployed, the customer
was absolutely delighted and has commissioned further
business from us on the strength of the quality displayed.
This is an excellent product.
Albert Day
Managing Director,
ADECS (Norfolk) Limited
Web and Software Developers |
Over the 10+ years
as a software developer I have found few products as
easy as Fast Help to work with, especially at the price
point that you sell it for. I encourage you to continue
your development and production of your applications.
I will definitely recommended Fast Help
to other developers should the opportunity arise.
Ande McMurtry
Sotware Developer |
Fast Help is a great
program. I can remember playing with a WinHelp editor a
while back and thinking what a pain it was going to
be to create a help file for
my application. With Fast Help I literally hit the
ground running and started
producing and organizing content right away.
David
Worthington
Chief Technical Officer
Lean & Mean Business Systems, Inc. |
What an improvement.
Excellent.
I am always wary that improvements sometimes
make a product not as good as the original. This
is not the case with Fast Help. I can see no reason
not to make Fast Help the
main Document Creator for all uses, Pdf, Word,
Programme
Integration and finally
the Web. This has been a job well done. It also seems
quicker. For developers this is
as usefull as WinZip.
David
Worthington
Staveleys, UK |
So far I really
like Fast Help. I purchased and tried to learn
eHelp but have about given
up. Fast Help seems to do 90% of theirs with about
10% of the learning curve
Robert G. Jones
Veterinarian |
"2
days ago I wrote -
* I have played with your software for about 20 mins and I am already converted.
Iam fed up with RoboHelp constantly hanging even on a PIII with 128MB and it's
shabby handling of inserting images. you are a true winning on both counts so
far. In the last 20 mins from new I have got further on my help file than I have
all afternoon in RoboHelp. Keep up the good work, I will spend a little more
time on this and then I think i'll buy a copy.
* Yesterday I bought a copy
* Today my help file is done. I have added context help throughout my project
for a fraction of the cost to use RoboHelp and it was really easy, even the contents
sections in Win95 help. Your product is superb! Many thanks."n
Tony Gorham
Programmer | Realist | Gadget Freak |
| "Thanks
again for all your super prompt responses to my support
emails! You folks really look after your user base
well."
Scott Long
General Motors, Canada |
"My
situation was tough because I took over supporting/upgrading
a software package from a previous developer. Part
of that result was that I needed a package to reverse-engineer
the help file so I may add the help for the new upgrades
I've done to the software. The help file was created
in RoboHelp. DotHelp successfully decompiled and
recompiled it and RoboHelp didn't. You would think
RoboHelp would be able to decompile it's own help
file! I even recompiled DotHelp's source and recompiled
it using Visual Studio's WinHelp and it worked! Thank
you for a great product that saved me hours of work!
I also speak to other developers and will gladly
pass the good word."
Jeff Adams
Senior Software Architect
Holland Computers, Inc. |
"I
just wanted to let you know!! This is the Best Help
Editor,
that I have had the pleasure to use. After fumbling all day, today trying to
get the Microsoft HTML editor to compile correctly. I re-created the whole help
project in a couple of hours with your application and it is working beautifully.
Now all I have to do is figure out how to make it context sensitive, when I call
the chm file from VB."
Ron Kresefsky
Benchmark Enterprises, USA |
"I
have worked in IT for 31 years and done everything
from programming, to Senior Management, including
a stay in Frankfurt Germany for six years as the
Area Director for Customer & Marketing Support
for Germany, Switzerland and Austria, and I don't
think I've seen a program yet that can save me as
much time as DotHLP has and will."
Jim Garner
Systems & Services, LLC |
| "Yes I received
the files yesterday. Also received a phone call confirming
the delivery. I’m very pleased with your companies
response to my immediate needs. Your product works
great, best I’ve used (and that includes RoboHelp).
Simple, straight forward interface that anyone can
learn in just a few minutes. I use a lot of graphics
in my help files, DotHLP handles them much cleaner
than RoboHelp. Let me know when the next upgrade
is available, it don’t want to miss it.
Brilliant software!"
Ken Sagen
VidXstream, TX, USA |
| "Excellent
customer service and a super product."
Martin Crilly
BT (British Telecom) |
| "I'm
impressed with how easy your software is to use.
It makes creating a help file so simple and quick.
Thanks for such a great product!"
Thomas Ashcraft
Design Engineer, Pedco, Inc. |
|
| |
| Our products have received
excellent reviews in the MSDN Magazine, Smart Magazine,
the Delphi Informant, ZDNet, Developers Review and the
Borland
User
Group magazine to
name just a few. Below is a small selection of reviews: |
Fast-Help
provides an intuitive interface for building a table of contents
hierarchy. At each level, you can embed
text, images, and figures through an editor similar to Microsoft® Word.
Sections of text or images can function as links to other
sections within the help document or to external Web sites.
Once you've created the content for the documentation, turning
it into a usable file is as simple as clicking a button
and choosing the output format. The HtmlHelp or WinHelp format
compiles into a single redistributable file that includes
the standard table of contents, index, and search panes.
Fast-Help's
ease of use is showcased by its "One
Minute Challenge." This challenge invites you to follow
a step-by-step set of instructions to create a multi-page
HtmlHelp file with images and links, all within well under
a minute.
While Fast-Help is geared toward providing a quick and
simple way to generate help documentation, it does not
skimp on the more advanced features. For example, it supports
defining global variables and using conditional logic to
add or remove help content.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/06/09/Toolbox/
Reviewed
by Scott Mitchell of http://www.4guysfromrolla.com
for MSDN Magazine September 2006 |
 |
"Fast-Help
gives you an easy, affordable
option for creating
Help files, complete with features you’d
expect in significantly
more expensive
generators."
Smart Computing Magazine,
January 2006. |
Regardless
of what language or development system
you’re
using, if you’re writing an application
(or even a complex
spreadsheet or other document meant for corporate use),
you’re
going to want to include Help files with your program.
There
are several good Help file generators
on the market, the
most well-known of which may be RoboHelp, a program now
owned by Macromedia. However, because of all of its power
and
sophistication, RoboHelp will cost you $1,000. What’s
a poor
developer or IT geek or geekess to do? Check out Fast-Help,
a
downloadable Help file creator that you can buy for $299
(www.fast-help.com). Fast-Help is easy to learn, easy
to use, and
easy to buy.
Fast-Help will let you create files
in multiple formats, including
PDF (Portable Document Format), HLP, Word, and PocketPC.
Perhaps best of all, the people at DevHost seem to embrace
that whole customer service thing: They actually answer
emails and solve problems. Fast-Help can’t
do 100% of what the bigger, pricier Help file generators
do, but it’ll do 90% of it—and it’ll
be about
100% easier to use.
Reviewed by Rod Scher, Editor www.SmartComputing.com,
January 2006 |
|
"DotCHM is a fully
fledged HLP and CHM help file generator. It covers
all features of HLP
programs - popups, filters, graphics, and much much more.
It has several levels of design so the user can have
less features visible and let the program finish the
details, to the full power of compiling to different
OS's. Excellent program"
Yipee Review
|
"DotHLP is a full-featured,
integrated Help generation system written entirely in Delphi.
It's
easy to use and remarkably affordable. With the exception
of actually having to write the Help text, DotHLP takes
the sting out of having to produce an application's Help
file."
Dr. Cary Jensin
Delphi Informant |
 |
Ziff Davis Rating
|
"A Quick Tour
lets you instantly create your first project, and the mostly
WYSIWYG entry
helps users to create effective Help systems with ease."
John C.A. DeKeles,
Technical Director
ZDNet AnchorDesk |
|
"Conclusions
Overall, I was very impressed. DotHLP is a very professional package, well
presented, with clear instructions and lots of really nice touches. A
lot of thought has gone into making everything as easy to use as possible.
The product is not specific to any particular development environment
or language, but does include features which will be of use to Delphi
component developers. For the price it’s very good value and I’d
have no hesitation in recommending it for creating new Help projects."
Chris Frizelle
Developers Review, |
What
Microsoft had to say about DotCHM
This is what the Help authoring Guru, Paul O'Rear had to say about DotCHM:
"I recently
reviewed DotCHM for the Microsoft and Help University
HTML Help
Business Development Program and found the product
very easy to work with and Gary Handley's responses
to my questions to be excellent. DotCHM succeeds
in its aim of a visual approach to help authoring
and quick turn-around of an HTML Help help system.
Take their One Minute Challenge and see for yourself!"
Paul A. O'Rear,
Sageline Software, Microsoft MVP |
| |
| |
|
The names DotHLP and DotCHM have
been famous in the Help Authoring world since 1997. In
2004 we completely rewrote and upgraded our product
lines and changed the name of our flagship
product to Fast-Help.
New Product
Names
DotCHM v2 becomes Fast-Help
DotCHM Enterprise v2 becomes Fast-Help International
DotCHM Site Licence v2 becomes Fast-Help 10 x User Licence
DotCHM Enterprise Site Licence v2 becomes Fast-Help International
10 x User Licence
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