Help Pane API Overview
The Help Pane API enables the programmatic control of the Help Pane. Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7 and later developers use this API to display help topics, display a table of contents, and display the results of search queries.
Important
The Help Pane API can only be used to display the Windows Help content set. It can be customized by OEMs, system builders, and enterprise customers under license agreement, but cannot be used by third-party programs. Displaying content that is not part of the Windows Help content set is not supported.
The Help Pane Proxy
The Help Pane is a shared system resource that runs in a separate process from applications that control or interact with it. Applications communicate with the Help Pane through an instance of the Help Pane proxy. The Help Pane proxy is an in-process object that represents the Help Pane to the calling application. It handles marshaling and other data communication between the application and the Help Pane, making sure that calls are serialized to avoid synchronization problems.