HTA's; use other browser to host?

Question

If Microsoft\'s method for using IE as a local host for HTA\'s then, can I use any other browser instead?

Answer 1

I was tackling the related task of running hta's from various browsers. I've put my findings here for anybody else who is trying to do that and finds this question.

You can run hta's from several browsers, using the same mshta executable that IE uses. You need fully qualified URI's in your hta code, which isn't needed from IE.

Today (2011-02-01) I tried using hta's from Firefox (3.6.13), Opera 11 and Safari for Windows 5.0.3.

After some teething problems in Firefox I got hta's to work from those browsers. (In all cases these use the same mshta executable that IE uses. This is not hta's running in other browsers, but running hta's from other browsers. This might suit your purposes.)

The hta started desktop applications on my machine (as it does from IE).

The experience wasn't perfect. For IE I set root relative paths in the hta. For the other browsers you can't do that. You need to set fully qualified URI's for things like images, referenced hta's and icons.

So after a little editing I have the hta's working from 4 browsers (IE 8, FF 3, Opera 11 and Safari 5 (Windows)).

(Quick snapshot of that. I'm running hta's from a web server on the local machine. (I have no plans to run them from remote sites.) This allows my workflow to go from browser to desktop more smoothly. The hta's fire up local applications that do things like edit web pages (including the hta's themselves), validate those pages and fire up IDE's. Bridging the gap between browser and desktop apps. has been a liberating experience. I recommend it!)

Notes:

1. The Firefox development team have notes about enabling hta's which encouraged me to continue after initial failure.
2. To achieve this in Firefox configuration I set HTML applications to run under mshta.exe (called Microsoft HTML Application Host, in the combo box). Initially that didn't work. I selected "other" picked the same application by hand. That worked, though I have two identical looking entries! You need mshta.exe on your machine to run for any browser. I assume the normal way to install mshta is with IE. (mshta is essentially a modified version of IE, possibly not the current version!)
3. The Firefox developers have marked this as a strategic effort to dislodge IE from the Enterprise. Their implementation (and Opera's) force you to use fully qualified URI's but apart from that the hta's work as expected.
4. Firefox seems to cache old versions of the hta's, and doesn't download new ones, though it appears to download something! You might need to clear the cache during development.
5. My first attempt to do it with Chrome was not successful. Further investigation suggests Chrome doesn't have a native interface for invoking other processes, based on their file extension.