Fleming

What It Is

Status

Last Reviewed:

There is zero chance this still works, because there’s no way Windows still supports HTML Applications. But the code is still valid, assuming you do anything in VBScript (hint: you don’t).

…RECORD SCRATCH SOUND EFFECT!!!

I just tried it, and it worked!

It might not work for you, depending on how your Windows is configured, but I double-clicked on Fleming.hta, and I’ll be damned if it didn’t open. I was able to click on the saved config for “The Bond Movies,” hit the “Transform” button, and it generated HTML file output.

I am shocked that this worked. Amazing.

Details

More than twenty years ago, long before Electron existed, Microsoft had a technology called HTML Applications.

The idea was very simple: an HTML file that had an “.hta” extension and was loaded from the file system could run in Internet Explorer with full privileges, including reading and writing to the file system, the registry, and anything else a local EXE could do. It had a special namespaced element in the HEAD which gave it these special powers.

Additionally, you could write client-side code in VBScript back then. Which meant that if you were a classic ASP developer (which I was), you could basically write client-side applications in the same language with which you did web development.

I used this in 2002 to build a little utility which batch-transformed XML files against XSLTs. The XML/XSLT stack was very popular in content management back then. I don’t know that I ever actually used this, but it was fun to build, and HTML Applications were a neat technology that really didn’t get used a lot. (I suspect the security implications were horrifying…)

Here’s the help file I wrote (hilariously – I mean, no one else ever used this… also, I loved the Trebuchet MS font back then…). It explains what the tool does, and even has a helpful screenshot (at right; click to enlarge).

You can download a ZIP of Fleming from the link above, if you want to take a look at how things used to work.

I even found the blog post form Gadgetopia where I announced it, dated October 12, 2002 (none of those links still work, BTW).

I built a small utility some time ago to do batch XSL transforms. It was both (1) an attempt to make transforming easier, and (2) an exercise to get some experience with Microsoft’s woefully under-exposed HTML Application technology (can you call it a “technology”? It’s just an unrestricted Web page, really).

The result was awfully handy so I wrote up a help file for it and registered it on HotScripts.com. You can find the utility and the download here. Hope you find it handy.