hta - Equivalents in Firefox, Chrome - Is this old technology?
I'd say that .hta applications are way out of date since they don't support modern design standards. you can still use them or use another HTML Compilers like the one by David Esperalta, it's good enough for very simple apps, but they all depend on IE and we all know how limited and slow it is.
Modern Alternatives:
- NW.js (previously known as node-webkit)
- electron which I personally use and recommend.
both mentioned options are based on Chromium (same as Chrome), Node.js and V8. they support HTML5, CSS3 and latest JavaScript engine including latest ECMAScript features and beyond!
and since they use node.js you can use any of its built-in libraries (like FileSystem) or any of npm packages right in your DOM!
The npm registry hosts over a quarter million packages of reusable code — the largest code registry in the world.
both options are FREE and open sourced but electron supports ffmpeg codecs without downloading or building them.
- both options now support ffmpeg out of the bag.
your app will be 100% standalone and you can build same app for Windows, macOS and Linux.
electron can also provide simple solutions to automatically compile and use CoffeeScript, Babel, LESS, SASS and more.
Downsides:
• You'll always have to ship the whole thing with you application since there's no run-time solution and you'll end up with a relatively big package.
• startup time is less than ideal for some applications
• although there is some methods to make it harder but your code will be available for anyone with an idea of what they are doing.
2021 Update
electron and nwjs are just as viable as ever but if you're looking for a more lightweight UI I'd also recommend Sciter.JS it made big leaps in recent updates and it does not ship a whole browser with your application, the developer seems committed to follow up-to-date HTML/CSS/JS Standards with some nice additions. it comes with good collections of samples to get you started. and prebuilt binaries for major OS editions. one thing to note is that it uses QuickJS instead of Node.js if that matters to you.
I've been following its development closely and I recommend trying it.
Actually HTAs are not run by Internet Explorer. They are run by mshta.exe, which is installed in Windows/System32 (Windows7). However, HTAs use IE's rendering engine, and can't be run without IE. Also they are available for Windows users only.
HTML5 support can be added by using <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=9">. By my own experience also <!DOCTYPE html> is needed.
More info in MSDN: Introduction to HTAs
In SO: HTA's; use other browser to host?