Bonus Files

Here is a summary of the bonus shareware, freeware and trial software included on this CD-ROM. For more information and installation details, click the relevant link.

Company/Author Software Included
David Baldwin HTML viewer components which make it really easy to display HTML in your applications.
Frank Piette Internet Component Suite is for developing server-side and client-side internet programs, and Midware for developing multi-tier applications. Both component suites are freeware.
Kevin Boylan VCLZip is a full-featured, native Delphi VCL zip/unzip component. It requires no external DLLs or applications and provides excellent performance and functionality.
Plasmatech The Shell Control Pack provides Windows Explorer functionality, including tree view, list view, combo box, splitter and generally enhanced tree and list controls. Full access is available to context menus, renaming/deleting, copy/paste, namespace extensions and much more.
Software Science Inc Topaz is a powerful yet easy to use database engine which compiles into your application's .EXE file.

Information and installation instructions are provided for the products of each company/author below.

David Baldwin

David Baldwin's excellent HTML Viewer components are used extensively in this application to display the HTML files which implement all the browsing and display elements. We think they are just great and you should all visit his website right now and purchase a copy!

Included on the CD-ROM is a demo version of the HTML component suite, containing a demo program with source, the VCL components (trial version), the help file and sample HTML files. These components support most of the HTML 3.2 specifications, with many additional popular HTML 4 enhancements. Many Cascading Style Sheet properties are also supported. The demo package differs from the Professional version in that the VCL source isn't included and there is an occasional 'Nag' message at startup.

The Browser demo program uses the new Indy internet components. The demo now supports five protocols: http for online HTML documents, https for online Secure Socket Layer (SSL), file for local disk HTML documents, zip for reading HTML documents from a zip file and res for reading HTML documents from an application's resources. The precompiled FrameBrowzerId program is complete, self contained, and ready to run. Source code suitable for Delphi 4, 5, and 6 is also included (you will need extra components to compile the source though).

The ThtmlLite component is an HTML viewer component designed for hobbyists, students or casual users. It is similar to the ThtmlViewer component but with reduced capabilities. There is no charge for its use and there are no Nag messages. ThtmlLite does not support Frames or the printing of HTML documents. Imaging capablilities include GIF, animated GIF, and bitmap. The Delphi 3, 4, 5, and 6 versions also support JPEG images. No graphics DLL is used. The self extracting file contains two demo programs (with source), a help file, and dcu files for Delphi 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 installations. When running the self extracting file, you will be given a choice of where to put the files. Choose any convenient directory. Run the demo program, HTMLDemo.exe, and select Readme.htm for installation instructions. This self extracting file requires a 32 bit operating system (Windows 95, etc).

The ThtmlLite Browser Demo is a simple browser demo for the ThtmlLite component. The package contains the browser executable and source for the demo. To compile your own experimental version, you'll need the ThtmlLite component, above, and the new Indy internet components (which come with Delphi 6; for Delphi 4 or 5, they may be downloaded from www.nevrona.com/Indy/.

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Frank Piette

Frank Piette's freeware internet-related components for Delphi are well known for their ease of use and high quality.

ICS is the Internet Component Suite. It comprises various internet components and applications covering just about everything from email to ftp and a lot more besides. The archive contains the source code, compatible with Delphi and C++Builder (all versions), along with lots of sample applications. In addition, the latest beta of ICS for Delphi is included, and a beta of ICS for Kylix too.

MidWare is a middleware component suite which you can use to build multi-tier client/server applications. A few components and a few mouse clicks and your client/server application is done. MidWare does not require the Delphi Client/Server or Enterprise edition. Any 32-bit Delphi or C++Builder versions can be used, including the standard version. The archive contains the full source code.

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Kevin Boylan

VCLZip is a full-featured, native Delphi and C++Builder VCL zip/unzip component. It supports all versions of Delphi. You can create zip files fully compatable with PKZip with no external programs or DLLs required. Full support is included for disk spanning archives, zip and unzip to and from streams and memory buffers, self-extracting archives, password-protected encrypted files, plus lots lots more. And there are no royalties.

The evaluation versions included on the CD are complete working versions of the VCLZip components, version 2.22. The only restriction is that it will only run while the Delphi or BCB IDE is up and running.

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Plasmatech

The Shell Control Pack from Plasmatech gives your Delphi applications Windows Explorer functionality. Simply place four components on a form, set two properties and you have a working Explorer! These powerful shell components include tree view, list view, combo box, bonus splitter and generally enhanced tree and list controls. Full access is available to context menus, renaming/deleting, copy/paste, namespace extensions and much more.

Add features to any application with the two-way splitter, image/indent combo box and enhanced panels. Enhanced list view and tree view controls support different fonts, colors and context menus for individual items.

Every application can benefit by replacing the limited and inflexible Windows common file dialogs. Microsoft did just that with Office 95 and 97. Now you too can liberate your program from the constraints of the common dialogs with 100% Delphi forms that look and act just like the system ones, only better! With extra functionality such as a resizable frame, tree view, and no three-character limit on file extensions, these components are useful in any application. And because they are Delphi forms, you can customize them directly or with visual form inheritance to add your own features like file previewing.

Internationalisation is fully supported, with translations provided for 16 languages - Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish and Swedish.

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Software Science Inc

Topaz is a visual component library of database and data access components that support the dBase file format standard. As a standalone database engine, Topaz replaces the BDE. Since the Topaz engine is entirely contained in the compiled executable, applications written with Topaz require no DLLs to ship or install.

Version 8.0 supports Delphi (4 to 6), C++Builder (3 to 5) and Kylix 1. It also includes an extensive library of time, date, string and file handling routines.

These free trial copies (of version 7.5: a trial copy of version 8.0 is not yet available) has everything you need to get started: it does not include source code to the components and runs only when Delphi or C++Builder is active.

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