microsoft patents HTML applications

[souleman]

One example of an HTML application at work in Windows is the "Add or Remove Programs" feature in the control panel.

They are already doing it. They just received a patient for it. This is nothing new and its not a internet thing. It is just an application that is coded using html commands but it still runs locally, not remotely.

[Tim_axe]

Would Custom Folder views fall under this description? Although they appear to be a mix of ActiveX and HTML... (I even made my own, "AntiOnline Folder View" - Search AO for it, get version 1.1) Active Desktop might also an example of this, and they force you to use it to have a JPEG Desktop Background. Of course I'm not exactly sure if this is what MS is talking about...

Side note on what can be done even with the security settings of the browser...
It is impressive how much you can do on an Active Desktop. I remember one thing I did at school was create a HTML page that would be loaded full-screen (entire desktop) with the normal background image, but also with a Fly that would follow the mouse cursor (done in JavaScript). Most people wouldn't notice if for a while just getting to the PC, but after looking at the screen you'd think they would try to slap at it to kill the fly... People even sat at an angle to see if it was real or not. I guess that a fly measuring about 60x60 pixels (3-4x size of a fly) on a low-res monitor would appear to be "real" to them...