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Comment by tlarkworthy | Hacker News Reader

you do not need the internet to open a ".html" file. With some "importmap" gymnastics you can embed images and libraries inside that file, all without the internet, offline-first

https://bsky.app/profile/chrisshank.com/post/3llmhyr33q22x

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Even so, you have to run a webserver and then run a browser separately and let the app sort of envelop you in this bubble made of norms that don't jive with the rest of your OS. Like, good luck making it append logs to a file without writing a third component that you now have to manage the state of in addition to the first two.

For the majority of things I do I just want to shove data in one end and get data out of the other end without ever having to build a UI or wondering if it's "up" or "down".

no you don't need to run a webserver, it works from a file domain directly. But true its not a CLI. Been thinking about whether that is possible though.

You don't need to run a dedicated webserver, but you do need some sort of layer that parses the html and JS and executes the JS. That is, effectively, a web server.

That is not appropriate for all sorts of software. For a lot, though, sure, that can work. It's just not a universal solution.

> you do need some sort of layer that parses the html and JS and executes the JS

A web browser?

Right, that's my point. That requirement is problematic for a lot of use cases.

Yes that's a browser and it implements a standard supported by multiple vendors for multiple operating systems.

Back in the day Internet Explorer could save a webpage. It would store an HTML page and a folder with all the images in it next to the HTML page.

And somehow they were linked. Deleting one deleted the other.

You could open the HTML page from your disk, in Internet Explorer. No internet required.

Update: they weren't linked at the filesystem level. Explorer.exe tracks .htm/.html and a folder_<something> together: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/shell/manage...

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