Apple Guide

Macintosh Guide, also referred to as Apple Guide, was

Apple Computer Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company b ...

's online help and documentation system, added to the

classic Mac OS Mac OS (originally System Software; retronym: Classic Mac OS) is the series of operating systems developed for the Macintosh family of personal computers by Apple Computer from 1984 to 2001, starting with System 1 and ending with Mac OS 9. The ...

System 7.5 System 7, codenamed "Big Bang", and also known as Mac OS 7, is a graphical user interface-based operating system for Macintosh computers and is part of the classic Mac OS series of operating systems. It was introduced on May 13, 1991, by Apple Co ...

and intended to work alongside Balloon Help. In addition to

hypertext Hypertext is E-text, text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typi ...

, indexing and searching of the text, Macintosh Guide also offered a system for teaching users how to accomplish tasks in an interactive manner. However, the process of creating guides was more complicated than non-interactive help and few developers took full advantage of its power. Apple enhanced the help system with

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...

-based help in Mac OS 8.5 which worked in conjunction with Macintosh Guide providing links to Macintosh Guide sequences. Macintosh Guide was not carried over into

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

, which uses an

-based help system. Macintosh Guide made use of the

AppleEvent Object Model Apple events are the message-based interprocess communication mechanism in Mac OS, first making an appearance in System 7 and supported by every version of the classic Mac OS since then and by macOS. Apple events describe "high-level" events suc ...

(AEOM), allowing the system to examine the state of the application as it ran, and change the help in response. Help content was created in individual steps, and each step could have assigned to it conditions to determine if the step should be skipped, or if the step was needed. For instance, if the user had already completed several steps of an operation and needed help to complete it, Macintosh Guide could "see" where they were, and skip forward to the proper section of the documentation. Additionally AEOM allowed Macintosh Guide to drive the interface, completing tasks for the user if they clicked on the "Do it for me" buttons (or hypertext). A distinctive feature of the system was support for Coaching. Using the AEOM, Macintosh Guide could find UI elements on the screen, and circle them using a "red marker" effect to draw the user's eye to it. Macintosh Guide was also somewhat integrated with Balloon Help, optionally adding hypertext to balloons that would open the right portion of the documentation based on what object the user was currently pointing at with the mouse. Classic Mac OS Online help Apple Inc. services {{mac-software-stub