HTML viewing in a VB app...

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Feb 19th, 2001, 07:07 PM
Michael Kizer

I was looking into creating some help and tutorial documentation for an app I am working on in plain HTML instead of Windows Help or even HTML Help (plain HTML is easier to maintain) and was wondering what the best method for displaying this information from within a VB app is.

I checked out using the Microsoft Intenet Control (SHDOCVW.DLL) to basically build a form into my app that would basically be a mini web browser just for the help info. This approach looks fine except for the distribution of the finished app. Will each user have to have the same version of IE, that I have, installed on their machine, or will distributing the SHDOCVW.DLL be enough? And will that DLL mess up someone's desktop with an older version of IE?

The other option I considered was just dropping the HTML files onto the user's hard drive and either letting them use the browser of their choice and/or shelling out from the VB app by just launching the "index.htm" for example (so whatever browser the user has associated with .HTM files will be launched). This option's downsides are the fact that it isn't as nice as the first option (forcing the launch of whatever web browser the user has installed) and if they don't have any browser installed (and who doesn't by now?) the help won't even come up.

What's your thoughts on this?
Feb 19th, 2001, 07:09 PM
crptcblade

well, you could put a webbrowser control on your form...then view your HTML's through there...
Feb 19th, 2001, 07:35 PM
trr042

You can use the web control to display content, but BE WARNED that when you compile the code, whatever version of IE you are using on your compiling machine will be the lowest allowable version on the installation machine.

This means that if you compile using IE 5.01 and a user has IE 5.0 SP1 (or lower), YOU WILL CORRUPT WINDOWS (msvcrt.dll and/or msvcrt40.dll). I learned the hard way! The only way to recover from the install is to re-install the windows system files.

We went with opening the default browser of the client machine to avoid this problem. Our company requires IE 5+ though, so it made designing the process much easier.

Regards
Feb 20th, 2001, 11:58 AM
Michael Kizer

Quote:

Originally posted by trr042
You can use the web control to display content, but BE WARNED that when you compile the code, whatever version of IE you are using on your compiling machine will be the lowest allowable version on the installation machine.

Yeah, that's about what I figured. I think I'll just just go with the method of firing up the user's default browser too. Seems like the safest way to go.
Feb 20th, 2001, 12:06 PM
Nice

use this to bring up the default browser:

Private Declare Function ShellExecute Lib "shell32.dll" Alias "ShellExecuteA" (ByVal hWnd As Long, ByVal lpOperation As String, ByVal lpFile As String, ByVal lpParameters As String, ByVal lpDirectory As String, ByVal nShowCmd As Long) As Long

Const SW_SHOW = 5

and when u want to open the htmfile use:

ShellExecute Form1.hWnd, "OPEN", <html file path>, vbNullString, vbNullString, SW_SHOW