Free html help decompiler/viewer?

[howard schwartz]

As far as I know it is still true that to view chm or microsoft's html help
pages you need the dlls and other files of IE 4 or higher. I have had some
success decompiling them with microsoft's free html help compiling workshop.

But I can not believe that competing browsers like netscape or firefox do not
find a way to, at least tell users how to view MS's html help files, using a
browser other than IE. That is, what minimal MS files do you need. I realize
one needs to make the alternate browser the `default'.

Any help on this? I do not want IE on my machine just to read chm help files.

 

[A man]

Because the MS HTML help files are not really HTML. They are COMPILED HTML and
are in a proprietary Microsoft format.

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http://chuckr.bravepages.com

 

[Pete Lees]

Howard,

As far as I know it is still true that to view chm or microsoft's html help
pages you need the dlls and other files of IE 4 or higher. I have had some
success decompiling them with microsoft's free html help compiling workshop.

But I can not believe that competing browsers like netscape or firefox do not
find a way to, at least tell users how to view MS's html help files, using
a browser other than IE. That is, what minimal MS files do you need. I
realize one needs to make the alternate browser the `default'.

Any help on this? I do not want IE on my machine just to read chm help files.

HTML Help uses Internet Explorer as its "layout engine", so it won't
work on a machine on which Internet Explorer isn't installed. See this
website for more information on the system requirements for HTML Help:

http://www.mvps.org/htmlhelpcenter/htmlhelp/hhsysreq.html

Notice this statement towards the end of the page:

"...it is not possible to distribute just the Internet Explorer files
necessary to display HTML Help. This brings up the other question
which is normally asked here, which is 'What are the key files that
are needed to view an HTML Help file?' Unfortunately, there's no list
of files that will actually work. You have to install Internet
Explorer on the target machine."

 

[JanC]

(e-mail address removed) (howard schwartz) schreef:

As far as I know it is still true that to view chm or microsoft's html
help pages you need the dlls and other files of IE 4 or higher. I
have had some success decompiling them with microsoft's free html help
compiling workshop.

But I can not believe that competing browsers like netscape or firefox
do not find a way to, at least tell users how to view MS's html help
files, using a browser other than IE. That is, what minimal MS files
do you need. I realize one needs to make the alternate browser the
`default'.

For unix/linux there is xCHM and other tools.

 

[Thorsten Duhn]

Hello,

As far as I know it is still true that to view chm or microsoft's
html help pages you need the dlls and other files of IE 4 or higher.
I have had some success decompiling them with microsoft's free html
help compiling workshop.

But I can not believe that competing browsers like netscape or
firefox do not find a way to, at least tell users how to view MS's
html help files, using a browser other than IE. That is, what
minimal MS files do you need. I realize one needs to make the
alternate browser the `default'.

Any help on this? I do not want IE on my machine just to read chm
help files.

"KeyTools" could be a help, but they need IE as well to do the
decompiling. Maybe you can use another machine to decompile there.

http://www.keyworks.net/keytools.htm

Regards,
Thorsten

 

[Pete Lees]

Thorsten,

"KeyTools" could be a help, but they need IE as well to do the
decompiling. Maybe you can use another machine to decompile there.

This is a great tool. However, for the purpose just of decompiling a
..chm file, you don't need anything more than %windir%\hh.exe, which is
part of the core operating system. Then you can decompile from the
command line by typing a command like this:

hh -decompile <target_directory> <filename.chm>