A CHM editor simplifies editing CHM files, which are used with Microsoft’s HTML Help program to create online help documents. CHM editors allow users to make changes easily and see the results in real-time. The popularity of CHM editors has grown due to the difficulty of editing CHM files.
A CHM editor is designed to make editing CHM files easier. Instead of dealing with advanced programming skills, flipping through pages of code, and downloading specific tools for working with CHM files, a CHM editor presents everything in an intuitive program where the user can simply click through menus to make changes or translate a CHM file. This type of editor is known as a WYSIWYG editor, which stands for “What You See Is What You Get”. This means that the image that the user sees and changes on screen is what the document will actually look like. Other editors might only show program code, and the user would have to save and preview the file to know what his changes would look like.
The CHM file is used with HTML Help compiled by Microsoft®. This program, initially released as HTML Help 1.0, is owned by Microsoft® and is used on all computers with the Windows® operating system. It is primarily used to create online help documents consisting mostly of text instructions, a full index, hyperlinks, and a table of contents. Images can be used, but no fancy backgrounds or special formatting are applied. Computer users may be familiar with this format if they have ever opened a separate help screen with a search box at the top.
Microsoft® updated HTML Help to version 1.33, after which it announced it would no longer be updating the program and would instead switch to a new program called Microsoft® Assistance Markup Language. HTML Help provided several benefits to those who used it to create help programs and indexes. It created smaller files that could use international characters and provided a large index that could combine the indexes of several CHM files. These advantages have made it much easier to use for writing help programs than using traditional HTML.
Due to the difficulty of editing CHM files, the CHM editor has grown in popularity. It allowed the user to open any CHM file and make changes to it, whether the user just wanted to change the language or needed to make drastic changes to the file content. CHM files have also been used in some types of electronic books, known as e-books, and anyone with these e-books could use a CHM editor on the file. Since HTML Help is used on any machine running Windows 98® or later, compatibility is not an issue and a user can open and edit a CHM file with a CHM editor from any computer running Microsoft®.
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