Introduction
When I began to design my web page I was on the lookout for a pgn viewer. It should
- display variations, textual annotations and NAGs (informant symbols),
- support UTF 8
- provide a well drawn board.
I have installed all viewers that I could find around the whole Internet and compared the features. View my blogpost on how to load the Java applets and flash videos today.
Results
Synoptic table
| Project name | View example | Input formats | Lines | Informant symbols | Text annotations | Training exercises | Autoreplay | Live broadcast | Manufacterer | Third party service | Last update | License | Language |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Canvas Chess 0.1.0 | view demo | PGN | yes | partially | yes | no | no | no | Ryan Cook, Yury Markushin, Patrick Horgan | no | 2016 | free | JavaScript |
| Chess Viewer Tool | view demo | PGN | no | no | yes | no | no | no | Caissa’s Web | yes | ? | free | JavaScript |
| Chess Assistant 10 | view demo | PGN, CBH, CA | yes | partially | yes | no | yes | no | Convekta | no | ? | fee required (part of Chess Assistant) | JavaScript |
| ChessBase reader | view demo | PGN, FEN | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | Chessbase GmbH | yes | 2016 | free | JavaScript (jQuery) |
| ChessBase 12 viewer | view demo | PGN, CBH, CBF, CBONE, FEN | yes | yes | yes | no | no | no | Chessbase GmbH | yes | 2013 | fee required (part of ChessBase >= 12 and CB Reader 2013) | JavaScript (jQuery) |
| ChessBase HTML Publisher 2.0 | view demo | PGN, CBH, CBF, CBONE, FEN | yes | yes, but poorly displayed | yes | no | yes | no | ChessBase GmbH | no | ? | fee required (part of ChessBase 8 – ChessBase 11 and several Fritz releases) | JavaScript |
| Chess Tempo PGN viewer | view demo | PGN, position editor | yes | incompletely | yes | no | yes | no | Chess Tempo | yes | ? | free (CC BY-NC-ND) | JavaScript |
| ChessTutor™ 2.7.1m1 | view demo | PGN, PGZ | no | $1–$6 only | no | no | no | no | Eduardo Suastegui | no | 2000 | free | Java |
| Chess Viewer Deluxe 3.5 | view demo | PGN | yes | as text | yes | yes | no | no | Nikolai Pilafov | no | 2009 | free | Java |
| DGT Chesstheatre 1.22 | view demo | PGN | yes | yes, partially as text | yes | no | no | no | DGT B.V. | no | 2009 | free | Flash video |
| DHTML Chess 3.0 | view demo | PGN | yes | no | yes | yes | yes | yes | Alf Magne Kalleland | no | 2017 | free (non-commercial), fee required (commercial) | JavaScript, PHP, MySQL |
| DHTML Chess 2.0 | view demo | PGN | yes | yes | not parsed correctly | yes | yes | yes | Alf Magne Kalleland | no | 2012 | free (LGPL, non-commercial), fee required (commercial) | JavaScript, PHP, MySQL |
| Eitschess Live Broadcasting Chess Viewer 1.0j | view demo | PGN | as text | no | yes | no | no | yes | Felix Fürnhammer | no | 2017 | free (GNU Free Documentation License) | JavaScript |
| HTML Chess 1.0 rev. 8 | view demo | PGN | no (parser error) | no (ignored) | no (parser error) | no | yes | no | Stefano Gioffré | no | 2010 | free | JavaScript |
| ICC viewer 2.1 | view demo | PGN | as text | no | yes | no | no | no | Andrew Gove | yes | 1999 | free | Java |
| iChess v. 1.2 | view demo | PGN | yes | no | yes | no | no | no | Gameknot | yes | 2009 | free | JavaScript |
| jsPgnViewer 0.7.1 | view demo | PGN | printed as text | partially | yes | yes | no | no | Toomas Römer | no | 2010 | free (Apache license) | JavaScript |
| KnightVision Chess PGN Viewer | view demo | PGN | yes | partially | yes | no | no | no | Glenn Wilson | yes | 2013 | free | Flash Video |
| LT-PGN-VIEWER 3.4 | view demo | PGN | yes | no | yes | no | yes | yes | Lutz Tautenhahn | no | 2010 | free (Apache license) | JavaScript |
| Misty Beach PGN Viewer V2.12 | view demo | PGN | no | no | no | no | no | no | Misty Beach Software Organization | no | 1998 | free (non-commercial), fee required (commercial) | Java |
| Montreux Chessgame Viewer 4.37 | view demo | PGN, MDF | yes | yes | yes | no | no | no | JBF Software (J. P. Hendriks) | no | 2008 | free (non-commercial) | Java |
| MyChessViewer 2.2 | view demo | PGN | yes | as text | yes | yes | no | no | Michael Keating | no | 2006 | free | Java |
| Palview 4 | view demo | PGN | yes | yes, but poorly displayed | yes | yes | yes | yes | Andrew Templeton, Eric Bentzen | no | 2003 | free | JavaScript |
| PGN Reader | view demo | PGN | yes | no (parsing error) | yes | yes | no | no | Kevin Coulombe | no | 2007 | ? | Java |
| pgn2html 2.0 | view demo | PGN | yes | incompletely | yes | yes | no | no | Werner Müller | no | 2003 | free (non-commercial) | JavaScript |
| pgn4web 3.04 | view demo | PGN | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | Paolo Casaschi | no | 2019 | free (GPL) | JavaScript |
| PGNtoJS V.3.31 | view demo | PGN | yes | yes | yes | no | no | no | Uwe Auerswald (†2008) | no | 2002 | free | JavaScript |
| PgnVierJS 0.9.8 | view demo | PGN | yes | partially | yes | no | no | no | Markus Liebelt | no | 2019 | free (Apache License 2.0) | JavaScript |
| SCID 4.6.4 | view demo | PGN | yes | partially | yes | no | no | no | SCID | no | 2014 | free (GPL) | JavaScript |
| Scid vs. PC 4.16 | view demo | PGN | yes | partially | yes | no | no | no | Steven Atkinson | no | 2015 | free (GPL) | JavaScript |
| Sjkbase 1.1 | view demo | PGN, EPD, FEN | printed as text | mostly printed as text | yes | no | no | no | Odd Gunnar Malin | no | 1999 | free | Java |
The following solutions cannot be shown here for licensing reasons or lack of a download link:
- Silverlight Chess by Martin Bennedik, license required
- Czech by David Zechiel, license required
- Alexander Gorbach
- Caissa Hamm
- SK Gronau (Lower Saxony). Replay function is password protected!
And the winner is …
In older versions of this document I recommended pgn4web due to its high flexibility. The main drawback nowadays is that it is not optimized for display on mobile devices which has become very important. The only viewer that is capable of this is the ChessBase reader. So you should use it definitely. There is simply no reasonable alternative at present.
Another very ambitious project is DHTML-Chess that aims to provide a full database interface where you can input games, but at the time being it seems not fully production ready to me.
Please avoid viewers written in Java. They were necessary in the days when JavaScript was slow and little standardised. Today Java is often disabled in browsers due to security flaws and all the referring projects are abandoned for years. The same holds for Flash video based software now. Pure JavaScript viewers only are state of the art today.
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