As users become more familiar with your application and how to navigate the user interface, they tend to move away from the “What is this?” type of question (previously answered with our multimedia help system) to the “How can I do this?” type of question. You could replace the multimedia clips in the multimedia help system to give intermediate users more detailed information about your application. However, more and more applications are using an invaluable new part of the Windows ethos, the wizard. Just look at how many wizards now appear in Visual Basic 5 and Access. Midlevel Windows help files may well take the user through the how-to for a particular task, but there’s no substitute for doing it, especially with help from a friendly wizard. So, what does it take to create one?
Wizards are surprisingly easy to produce, and they can be of further use by also including the multimedia-style help as part of the interface. With a little thought, you might even be able to show how they can be filled in to further help the user by extending the spoken help concept. Instead of playing a help file indicated by the resource file, you can load text into the text boxes in the wizard from your resource file and demonstrate the values to be entered into the wizard.