Before now, if you wanted to create your own Windows application, you would have to go out and learn a programming language like C++ or Microsoft Visual Basic. Well, not anymore. With Microsoft’s latest Web browser, Internet Explorer 5, they’ve given developers the power to create their own applications using technologies and languages they already know, such as DHTML, HTML, CSS, and scripting languages.
HTML Applications (HTAs), as they’re called, have all the power of IE5 without the browser interface, and since they are executed directly they don’t have the same security constraints as Web pages. Once saved on the client machine, they simply runs like any other executable (.exe) program. This means that the HTAs can read and write files on the client machine or run embedded ActiveX controls and Java applets regardless of any security zone settings.
Just how easy is it?
It’s easy, let me tell you. We’ll start by creating the mandatory “Hello World” program to announce ourselves to the planet. Before continuing, you’ll need to make sure you have Internet Explorer 5 installed on your system. So if you don’t yet, head on over to microsoft.com and download it. It’s a great browser, and it’s free.  View Source Code Run Program |
Are you ready now? Great, let’s get started. Create a new file called
hello.hta |
Hello World
Now save it and double-click on the file. If everything went well, you’ll see a window pop open with the text ‘Hello World’ in it. Almost seems a little too easy, didn’t it?
What just happened there?
Windows knows right away that you want to run an HTML Application based on the file extension (.hta); and because we didn’t specify any window attributes, it just opened a standard window with the default settings and displayed the text we entered much in the same way that Internet Explorer would display a Web page.You can customize the look and feel of the application window as well as it’s behavior by inserting an “HTA:APPLICATION” tag in the HEAD of your document. This tag lets you specify a number of window attributes from the window border style to the program icon displayed.
Let’s try something a little more advanced. Create a new file called
hello2.hta |
Hello World 2
Hello World 2