Released v1.3.0 of my HTML Resource Compiler

Well, this one's pretty niche!

And it's getting nich-er-er-er by the day as Internet Explorer dies a slow death.

Why's that?

Well, HTMLRes compiles individual files files into a single 32 bit resource file, with the contents of each file being recorded in a separate RT_HTML resource. The resources have the same name as the files.

These resources have two uses:

  1. Internet Explorer can display RT_HTML resources compiled into a DLL using the res:// protocol. This article explains.
  2. The IE based TWebBrowser can do the same. Therefore any program that uses TWebBrowser can embed the HTML & images it displays in the program's resources. This means you don't have to distribute such files with the program and read them from the file system. The same article explains.

Big deal - why not use BRCC32 to compile them then? Well, my CodeSnip program uses the approach in point 2 above in parts of its UI, and I include some HTML and image files in RT_HTML resources when CodeSnip is built. To simplify things I name the resources using the names of the files.

And here's the rub: BRCC32 won't (as of Delphi XE, which I still use to compile CodeSnip) allow resource names with dots in them, you know, like file extensions. And so I wrote HTMLRes to do what BRCC32 wouldn't. Simple.

I'm guessing there won't be many downloads of this rather specialised little program, but for completeness I'll just say that I've finally modified it to compile with a Unicode Delphi compiler. Yep, it's that old! That's it, no other significant changes. Previous releases were compiled with the marvellous Delphi 7, so I compiled this version with my oldest Unicode compiler, Delphi XE, to minimise the changes needed. I've checked it with Delphi 11 Alexandria since, and all works fine.

If you're the one other person who finds this program useful, you can download it here.

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