Balloon Helper

If you are like me, you find Balloon Help can be both very useful and very annoying.

With the growing tendency of software companies not to include a printed manual with their programs, Balloon Help can be a very attractive alternative to having to first find, then open, and -- finally -- to search through an online manual when you want to quickly find out some info about an application that you are using. Also, by its very nature, Balloon Help is context sensitive.

The downside to using Balloon Help has always been that once you've gotten the information you need, you have obtrusive "balloons" popping up all over the place. Of course, you can always go to the Help menu to turn Balloon Help either on or off, but this quickly becomes both tedious and relatively time consuming.

Balloon Helper allows you to set your own keyboard shortcut for quickly and easily turning Balloon Help either on or off (if your keyboard has function keys, you may also set one of these as your shortcut).

Balloon Helper works without taking up valuable Desktop real estate because it works even when it's not visible -- there is no need to either launch it or to leave the program which you are in when using it.

A Macintosh computer with System 7.5.3 or later (including Systems 8, 8.1, 8.5, 8.5.1, 8.6, and 9.x) and a 68020 or later processor (including PowerMacs, iMacs, G3, G4, PowerBooks, and Performas).

Balloon Helper works in the Classic environment of OS X through version 10.04. A free update that works in the Classic environment of OS 10.1 is expected to be released before the end of the year.

Questions? Comments? I would like to hear from you!

balloon@macease.com