 This video is a prequel to Friday's video kind of sort of. It's actually not really a prequel because a prequel would come after Friday's video and refer to something happened before. Anyway, this video is just to clarify some things that are going to be in the video this coming Friday. If you've been watching the series that I've been having on the last couple of weeks for Fridays on cross-platform development, we're basically taking an HTML file and creating applications that are running locally using that as a front end. And this Friday I'm going to show you about something called HTA. HTA is basically, oh it means HTML application. It's something that Microsoft created and I think it's a pretty neat idea, although I can see some issues with it, but I guess the issues might come into play with all applications when it comes to permissions on a Windows machine. But first things first, in the video you'll see that the application that we created in the first video of this series, which is a HTML file using JavaScript and jQuery mobile to create a list of items that you can search through with a filter, well with the HTA file the functionality is fine, but it looks a little different. It's just rendering it different and the items that we click on usually have very curved round edges in our original when we're viewing them in most web browsers, but in the HTA file they're more square. So although the functionality is the same, the look is a little different and in the video you'll see on Friday I attribute this to HTA using Internet Explorer as a back end and on that particular system I'm using it's a Windows XP operating system and Microsoft, the newest version of Internet Explorer you can get for Windows XP, I believe is Windows 8, Internet Explorer 8, which is what I'm running on that machine. That's right, Microsoft does not even support its own operating system. You can get brand new versions of Firefox and Chrome that run on Windows XP, but when it comes to Microsoft they're like, well we know that's our product, we know that's our operating system, but we're not going to make them compatible. That's just what we do, but I'm not going to get off on that little rant any more than I just did. But I did try out the HTA file on a newer Windows 7 machine that has an up-to-date Internet Explorer and in the Internet Explorer it displays properly the CSA says the formatting looks fine, but still in the HTA file we still have the square look to our items. So once again the functionality is fine, but apparently I was wrong because I would think if it's using Internet Explorer to render out the HTML it would render the same Internet Explorer and HTA. So I'm not really sure what HTA is using to render the HTML, but it doesn't seem to be Internet Explorer. Maybe it's using certain files from it. I'm really not sure at this point, but I wanted to clarify that I'm pretty sure I was wrong on saying that as you'll see this Friday. Next thing I want to say that I don't mention in this Friday's video that I feel that I should is that HTA basically is taking an HTML file, you rename it instead of .html you rename it .hta and now as far as Windows concerned it is an application that runs locally on your machine here. And this is important and this is not what I mentioned in that video is that it has the permissions of any other application on your system, meaning that you can put stuff in the HTML file rename it .htl or HTA and now it can access your hardware and your files on your system. I haven't played around with this too much, you know I know just enough to get my stuff working on Windows I haven't played with it too much but this is definitely can be a security issue. Obviously any application you run locally on your system can have has the permissions that the user has which on Windows is a whole lot unless your system is really locked down. But in the previous tutorials that I showed on using this HTML file as cross platform development we used either Python or C++ some programming language like that and then we called WebKit which would render out our HTML as our GUI front end. Now in those particular cases the HTML file itself is still in a jail it's in a sandbox it should in theory not be able to get out of that WebKit. Now you could program the Python or the C++ to communicate with the page and do certain tasks and of course the Python and the C++ or the C++ would have access to your hardware and files but the difference with the HTA is that it's the HTML directly accessing your system using HTA commands and I guess probably visual basic script commands as well would probably work once again I am played around with this too much. So I bring this up one because it would be useful if you need to access the hardware where the other ways is kind of like a two-step process you can do this directly with the script although if you did do it that way it would make your program less cross platform compatible where if you did it through the Python or C++ it should still work on you know all your desktop application operating systems but I would think in theory and I haven't tested this out and this is where a security issue could come into play. In my mind if I write something if I write the application C++ using WebKit I can have C++ look at what the HTML is doing and respond accordingly whether or not you click on a link it will go oh if they click on this link do this or they if the page displays this then do this and it can the C++ would interact with the files on your system or hardware on your system whereas I said that HTA is the HTML code and what's in that page directly accessing it so I would think once again in the C++ scenario with WebKit if you went to an external page it should be pretty much like viewing in a browser where it's locked in it shouldn't be able to get out of that browser in theory obviously there's security issues every once in a while that should be patched but the chances of it getting out are slim where if your code was to redirect and look at a external page somewhere and that external page had malicious code I would think that it would directly be able to access your system which would be bad once again I haven't played around with this maybe I will maybe we'll do a video on that in the future but I just wanted to bring that up because I don't mention that in the video on Friday and although it could be very useful if you're writing your program to directly access just remember that that code has the potential if you're looking at redirecting the pages outside of what you wrote those things now possibly have a lot more power than just a regular website that's inside a web browser sandbox so I thought I would bring it up because I think it's pretty important to know but that's about it I just wanted to give you the heads up correct myself on what I misspoke on and and mention some things that I don't mention in Friday's video so I hope you're looking forward to Friday's video because if you did want to create a HTML file that acts like a local application that really is a local application hta is a simple way of doing it and that's it thank you for watching please visit my website it's filmsbychris.com that's Chris the K there should be a link in the description and I hope that you have a great day