Tutorial

Starting with Internet Explorer version 5, Microsoft introduced the HTML Application, or HTA. HTAs are full-fledged applications. These applications are trusted and display only the menus, icons, toolbars, and title information that the Web developer creates (screen shot). In short, HTAs pack all the power of Internet Explorer — its object model, performance, rendering power, protocol support, and channel-download technology—without enforcing the strict security model and user interface of the browser.

HSP and EzWeb Compiler complement HTAs perfectly. For example, without HSP, HTAs are doomed to be static applications and aren't really much good. That is, they cannot generate their webpages dynamically from a database or the file system or other external sources. But HSP enables dynamic content in HTAs, extending their power by orders of magnitude. Also, an HTA is made up of many HTML and GIF/JPEG files. These would be difficult and clumsy to distribute separately. But using EzWeb Compiler, they can be stuffed into a single file to be seamlessly read by HSP.

Conclusion

HTAs become a powerful application programming environment when used with HSP's ability to generate dynamic content.