New Trends For Online Help

Hi,
My project team uses Robohelp X5 and Robohelp X8 to generate help files. Recently, a lot of UI changes have been introduced. They have tried to enhance the look and feel of the application so that it resembles the commonly used social networking sites like facebook, orkut, etc. We have been asked to do a research on the kind of help available in all social networking sites available.
The help in those sites is very much different in terms of language used, search functionality, how do i questions, topics as links etc.
I would like to know if its possible to change the look and feel of the help, not only the skin, but in the way it works, making it more user friendly.
Do you have any other suggestions for enhancing the help?
Thanks in advance!

Most of this inquiry can only be answered after high level discussions involving multiple disciplines within your organization, leading to business decisions that are, of course, well beyond the purview of most users in this forum. That is:
How will the help be delivered (installed to user machines, installed on customers' servers, distributed on your company web site or user portal)? That is, will HTML Help, WebHelp, AIR Help be the best way to go?
Will the help be embedded in your software product (this will require some high level expertise on the part of your developers)?
How large will the help be, how many authors will be working on it, and how sophisticated are they in the use of RH?
You would do well to check out the excellent web sites maintained by Peter Grainge, Rick Stone, Colum McAndrew, Willam van Weelden, etc., all long-time contributors to this forum. Once you've done your due diligence, and gotten more top level guidance from these good folks, you'll certainly have specific questions that will gladly be answered here, as usual.
Good luck,
Leon

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