The next joy I found with Dr.Explain is a core part of its functionality (and most other help-authoring tools as well):  I can often compose a complex technical document fairly quickly, and even have it turn out fairly well organized.  But then I sleep on it, and read it the next day pretending I have never read it before, and I see places where the sequence could be productively changed to make it clearer, or that I need to insert a topic to give the reader orientation to something that I hadn't thought of in the original draft.

 

Combine this with the fact that I would always add "next" and "previous" page links to each topic because I myself, if I am new to a subject or a piece of software, like to study it IN SEQUENCE given that I expect the help author(s) to lay out the basics of a subject FIRST so that I am oriented before getting into a higher level of detail.

 

What happens if your help file is already created when you realize you need to insert a new page, or re-arrange the sequence of topics, and you are using Microsoft HTML Help Workshop?  Well, immediately 4 or more of these "next" and "previous" page links are going to be invalidated for every page that has to be moved.  How long does this take?  What if you get an interruption in the middle of correcting the links?  What if you make a typo?

 

Dr.Explain automates this whole task.  This is another (in my opinion) great feature of Dr.Explain:  what does it take to re-organize topic sequences in Dr.Explain?  Select the topic in the table of contents and Ctrl-Up and Ctrl-Down or at most, dragging and dropping topics with your mouse to reorganize them.  Done!

 

In the same amount of time it took me to write the above paragraph (about 30 seconds), the task would be completed already.  All the internal next/previous links are taken care of.

 

Adding a new page?  Select the parent page, click Add Topic or Capture Window to add the new topic page, and Ctrl-Up -Up -Up -Up until it is where I want it.  Then type your text, or copy it from another source if there is one.  Done!

 

Reorganizing the entirety of, say, a 30-topic help file, if you had to do this by hand, would be uninviting to say the least.  In Dr.Explain:  drag and drop each topic to its new location.  In my estimate:  this turns a 60-minute task (during which you hope you aren't interrupted) into 5 minutes!

 

Again, this is simple, but a well-targeted productivity booster, around these "next" and "previous" page links, which I consider core functionality of any help file -- and certainly any help file I create.