Show HN: LHTML – local, portable webapps | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: LHTML – local, portable webapps

github.com

37 pointsiffycan11 comments

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I should also highlight this important issue about what to name this thing: https://github.com/iffy/lhtml/issues/2

If you like this kind of thing:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_Application

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Compiled_HTML_Help

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MHTML

Thank you for this list! I wondered if this kind of thing had been done before. MHTML seems especially interesting. I'll have to test browser-compatibility for my use case.

Firefox OS apps also were HTML+JS with a few extra APIs, e.g. for file access.

I always thought CHM was a great format, and surprised it didn't take off... though a more generic .zip (with another extension) where 'index.html' as the start page would be good too.

There's EPUB, though it requires some metadata files along with the HTML.

The EPUB spec is a pain. It's both overly simple, and overly complicated, and I'm not aware of a single reader that is completely compliant.

For example, JS and XHRs are in the spec, but few readers allow them, for very good practical reasons.

This is a great idea. If people can pass Excel spreadsheets and Word documents back and forth through email, why can't they pass custom form apps made of pure HTML and JS?

With this document format we're almost leaving the 90's and entering the 00's.

Now go get your friends and family to install the viewer.

Thanks, I had the same thoughts, though I chuckled when I read:

> we're almost leaving the 90's and entering the 00's.

Because I feel the opposite: computers were first terminals attached to mainframes, then in the 90s the pendulum swung to personal computers free from the mainframe. In the 00s we swung back to the "cloud" (terminals dependent on the central computer) and LHTML feels like the pendulum swinging back to computers being able to run without the mainframe/cloud.

Yes, you are right, but I didn't thought in these terms.

I was thinking that while web technology evolved so much in the last years, people would still pass around documents based on formats from the 90's (Word and Excel).

I've just written "web technology" up there, but that is wrong, and I think LHTML shouldn't use the word "web" in its copy. What we have is "browser technology", "html+javascript renderers", anything like that. That is the technology that evolved. "Web" is a word that designates different things.

Interesting. +1'd

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