As you might have noticed I change the section to the OCX section for this discussion after reading the page at

http://www.microsoft.com/workshoop/author/htmlhelp/betapage.htm

It looks like M$ plans to make a major change to the old hlp files and hc31/35.exe with its archaic symbols and coding.

This is really cool. The concept of a help file as an ocx with its properties, events and methods accessable as any other control (plus some really neat functions, see the page) really opens up possibilities for incorporating active style help, tutorial macros, even computer based training directly into your app with minimal extra work.

Imagine having a user hit F1 and triggering the help file to fire off a video clip of how to preform a desired task. Or play a sound file explaining the definition the data in a field.

Can't wait to play with this.