From the EnCore mailing list August 27,2002. Alexandre Borgia writes: Hola, There are a lot of ways to add "text-based" help entries. 1) The "general-purpose" (ie: not related to a specific object) way to do it is to add a property to the $help object, which name will be the help topic. For example: @prop $help."moo policy" "" @notedit $help."moo policy" (or use the web editor) The user will then get the help message whenever he types "help moo policy". 2) If you want the user to get help for a specific object, you can simply create & edit an "help_msg" property on the object. 3) For commands/actions/functions/etc, the comments (quoted text) put above the first line of code are considered to be the help-message of the verb. So considering you have a "car" object, and a "drive" verb on it, if you insert the following lines at the beginning of the verb: "Type: drive car to "; "to get there. You can also type 'drive faster/slower'"; ... they will be printed to the user when he types: help car:drive Note that for (1) and (2) you can also use a VERB instead of a property. This makes possible dynamic help entries (the "help wizard-list" is a good example - this listing doesn't have to be edited manually, it is always up-to-date:) To do such dynamic topics, create a verb using the name the property would have as explained above. Make sure you add the "x" perm so it can be executed from a process. Use whatever fancy code you want, but make sure you return a STR or a list of STR. These will be printed to the user. As for "web-based" help, the "encore help" button is in fact using a structure very similar to (1), though a little more complex (and I don't know if it handles verbs as well ...): a) if you want to put en entry in the main encore help subindex, put the property on $encore_help. b) if you want to put it in another topic listed on the left, move the mouse over the link and check the object number it refers to. c) if you want to create a new menu-topic, create a children of $generic_help. The name of the object will be the name of the topic. The help-menu on the left is personalized: the Help Browser checks the descendants of both the player and its location for ".help" properties on them. You HAVE to put a reference to your new help-object in such a property on the player's hierarchy (or its location). Try: @d $prog.help The 4 entries are programmer-related topics, and they will only be shown to $prog descendants. So, for "general-purpose" help, you can add the object-reference to #6.help. It will be shown to all users. As for the light-bulb, I don't know if there is a way to customize it. It is kind of a web-variant of the "@examine" text-based command, and will lists useful things you can do with the object. As you know, URLs you put into: "." will be shown on the left. So one way to do interesting help pages would be do use the (1) or (2) method above, use a VERB, and make a "if (player.ts_client)" statement so it points to a web page if the player is using a browser. Hope this helps ;) - Alexandre Borgia