CHM viewer apps - Fast offline manual access
Apr 07, '04 07:00:00PM
Contributed by: robg
The macosxhints Rating:

[Score: 7 out of 10]
A somewhat odd PotW this week, as there are actually two of them ... and neither one is really perfect for what I needed, but they were good enough to get the job done. While upgrading the forum site to the newest version of vBulletin, I wanted convenient access to the vBulletin documentation. The docs are available in HTML, printable (everything on one page) and CHM formats. I hadn't heard of CHM before, but it's apparently a Microsoft-proprietary technology for compiled help files in HTML format. Although the HTML version of the manual was easy enough to download (Save As in Firefox has an option to save the whole collection of pages and images), I was curious about the CHM manual, as I'd seen them on other sites (php.net, for instance). After a bit of digging on the web, I found two OS X CHM readers - xchm (open source) and CHM Viewer ($4.95 shareware), so I downloaded both for a trial run.
After playing with both programs for a couple of weeks, each definitely has its strengths and weaknesses. First, xchm is a free and open source application that leverages some other open source technologies, and thanks to Chanler White, it's a simple drag and drop install. Its major advantage over CHM Viewer is that it has a working search system, making it quite easy to see all matches for a given keyword(s). You can also create bookmarks, to make quickly finding an important page in a long manual much easier. However, xchm doesn't render the pages nearly as nicely as does CHM Viewer (see screenshot below), and I had it crash on me once or twice. Printing is present, though basic -- you can only print the currently viewed page. Finally, and this may be specific to my setup, I couldn't get any embedded internet links to open -- they would say "loading," but then nothing would happen.
CHM Viewer is an OS X native Cocoa shareware app, priced at a very reasonable $4.95 (free trial version available, but see note below), which is about all I'd pay for such an app, given there's a free alternative. CHM Viewer's biggest advantage over xchm is its ability to render a nicer looking page, as seen in the screenshots below. In addition, CHM Viewer is one of a growing number of apps that takes advantage of Apple's open source Webkit to render HTML pages -- external links render directly in CHM Viewer, and you can then navigate the WWW via a rudimentary browser if you wish. As an example of the differences in the rendering engines, consider the following screenshots. As for the difference in page rendering, consider these two pages. CHM Viewer is on the left and xchm is on the right, showing the same page (at close to the same size in both shots) of the vBulletin manual; click either image for a larger version (about 120KB per picture).
As a Cocoa app, you have full access to the Services menu, and CHM Viewer also has easier-to-use font size controls, with + and - scaling buttons available directly on the toolbar. CHM Viewer's most glaring omission is its lack of support for any sort of searching, which greatly limits is usability if you don't know what you're looking for! It is, like xchm, limited in its ability to print only the currently viewed page, though improved printing is on the list for future improvements.
One major heads-up, at least with the current shareware version: CHM Viewer pops up one of those standard shareware registration nag dialogs. That, in and of itself, is fine with me. However, the warning is set to come up every minute, and (most annoyingly!) it activates the bouncing dock icon to alert you of the dialog. So if you leave CHM Viewer in the background and start working on something else, you'll soon be clicking your dock to activate and silence the registration reminder ... but only for another 60 seconds, then you get to do it all again. I've had some email correspondence with the author, and suggested that the bouncing dock icon was enough of an annoyance that many people wouldn't even bother to register (he's considering changes in a future release). Since I was finding the program useful, I went ahead and registered (and at only $4.95, I didn't have too many worries about getting value for my registration dollar).
So if you ever need to view a CHM manual on your Mac, there are at least two tools that will mostly get the job done. I wound up using both of them -- I spent most of my time in CHM View, and switched over to xchm only when I needed to search for something. If CHM Viewer can add more robust printing, a basic bookmark manager, and (most importantly) support for searching, it will be a clear winner in my book (but hopefully with some changes in the nag reminder for non-registered users). The CHM format was actually quite useful; it's very speedy, and it's convenient having to only keep track of one file, instead of an HTML index page and associated folder of backup pages and images. As I said at the beginning, neither app is really close to perfect, but they do get the job done...
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