Reduce the Size of Your Help System

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Microsoft Corporation

June 23, 1998

When you use HTML Help Workshop to compile the files in your help project, the source files are compressed into a compiled help (.chm) file, which uses far less disk space than the original source files. This enables help authors to easily distribute small compiled help (.chm) files to users. The compiled help files can be distributed along with a software product, or they can be quickly downloaded from a Web site.

Compressed HTML works as follows:

• HTML Help Workshop provides a default user interface for creating compressed HTML.
• Compression is incremental and is part of the retail package, so if topics or other items are modified,added, or removed, the compressed file can be quickly updated without user intervention.
• All files are decompressed on the client side.

When you compile your project file to compress the source files, you also get additional functionality in the HTML Help ActiveX™ control that is not available with stand-alone HTML files. For example, full-text search is an integral part of compressed HTML.