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0 pointsinteresthrow27y ago0 comments

The irony. They had HTA apps (running on IE engine which still work more or less, I replaced most default Win10 apps like the image viewer and the "groove" music player with a version of them built with HTA since they were slow as hell to start up) for 20 years already, they did barely anything with it, they didn't really invest seriously in a good browser engine (Edge isn't) and now all they can do is use Google's? typical Microsoft... reminds me the whole ES4/Jscript.net debacle only to then reinvent the wheel (ineffectively) with Typescript... those who don't know the story should read about it, how many years wasted? 10, 15 years?...

What MS is really doing is replacing HTA,WinStore apps, whatever with Chromium, because their own tech can't compete with Chromium as they didn't seriously invest in it. I'm actually starting to believe the people who are claiming that MS is rebuilding Office in JS from scratch...

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maxxxxx7y ago

Their desktop strategy is really confusing. I think even to themselves. It seems since around 2000 or when .NET came out they lost direction, repeatedly tried something, didn't really finish and dropped it. Mobile strategy wasn't much better.

giancarlostoro7y ago

They are fragmented and not under a single focus and that is the problem. While the executives at the top are focused on cloud those in charge of the OS and other crucial products are making some oddball decisions for whatever reason. If Microsoft could push all their teams towards a consistent vision it would be great. Otherwise we will continue to see this giant love-hate of Microsoft vs the appreciation they deserve for the things they do get right. I am company neutral so I try to appreciate companies that do some things right.

belltaco7y ago

>now all they can do is use Google's

Wasn't WebKit Apple's first? And before that KDE's KHTML and KJS. Funny how the narrative has changed.

dragonwriter7y ago

> Wasn't WebKit Apple's first?

Yes, but while Blink forked from WebKit, it isn't WebKit.

> Funny how the narrative has changed.

That's because the facts changed.

belltaco7y ago

Well, at one point 'all they could do' is take Apple's. And later iterated on it, which MS just might do in the future.

JBiserkov7y ago

>I'm actually starting to believe the people who are claiming that MS is rebuilding Office in JS from scratch...

Office is C++, with 85-95% code shared between Windows, OS X, Android, iOS and Web; with a very tiny presentation layer on top.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFmByeQ_ulo

maxxxxx7y ago

That's an interesting video. Office has developed an incredible toolset for OS independent development and also very powerful UI libraries. I always wonder how Windows desktop development could look if they had released office components as libraries for developers. I think Windows development went downhill when office introduced the ribbon and started to deviate from the standard look and feel of the OS.

est7y ago

HTA combined with ActiveXObject can do so much more than crappy w3c standard stuff.

dHTML FTW!

Piskvorrr7y ago

Yup. Alas, that's not a feature, that's a gaping security hole. (Had the misfortune of working on a HTA e-mail client. Turns out, some of the VBS viruses of the age were executable in HTA context...hilarity ensued.)

est7y ago

electron apps are basically static linked sandbox.

I am sure upgrading static linked programs is easy. :D

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im3w1l7y ago

I think their hand was forced by antitrust action against IE.

mr_toad7y ago

> MS is rebuilding Office in JS from scratch...

Well if it’s going to run on Electron, that’s a given.

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