Tutorial

Internet Explorer becomes the ideal Windows Scripting Host for Windows 2000

Windows is has many new scripting objects that allow you to interact with the OS to perform many administrative scripting functions. HTML Scripting Pages is the means by which you can use Internet Explorer to host your scripting applications (see the HSP webpage for a complete description of HSP). Microsoft has released Windows Script Host to give Windows users/administrators a platform from which to run Windows scripts. HSP with IE is a superior platform for running Windows scripts for several reasons.

• Besides being ubiquitous, IE provides a visually richer environment for running scripts.
• HSP technology allows you to bundle many scripts into a single .HSP file which can be easily invoked (by double clicking or via the Favorites menu).
• HSP files can be easily distributed, since everything is bundled into a single file.
• HSP files can also contain EzBase database files along with HTM/ASP script files, so you can collect data when and where needed.  Or read from/write to a SQL database using ADO.

But HSP + IE is also good for NT4 and Win9x platforms as well. This is because you can create your own custom COM objects that can be used from within your HSP pages. Your custom COM objects can do anything you may need to do. Of course, you can also use existing COM objects as well, such as ADO, etc.

Conclusion

HSP + IE is a robust environment for creating, bundling, distributing and running your Windows scripts. Windows Scripting combined with the superior rendering capabilities of IE (made possible by HSP) makes it the clear choice for new Windows scripting utilities.