The observation that novice users seldom consult online help was made over twenty years ago. This observation still holds nowadays, although online help to the use of software for the general public has greatly improved in usability during this period. The paper first demonstrates the necessity of online help to the use of new software whatever the transparency of the user interface, as whether online help systems are meant to compensate for interface design weaknesses or actually do provide necessary assistance to the discovery of a new software package functionalities is still an unsolved issue. The discussion relies on results of empirical and experimental studies and theoretical arguments. In the second part, we analyse the specific difficulties raised by the design of effective online help systems for current software intended for the general public so as to try and understand the reluctance of novice users to use online help. In the last part, we present and discuss the possible contributions of various approaches to solving this issue. Recent interaction paradigms and techniques are considered, such as, static and dynamic personalisation, contextual online help and new forms of multimodality.