Back in the day (late 90s), Microsoft had a format called "HTML Application."<p>It was just an HTML page with a ".hta" file extension. Opening such a file would open it in a chrome-less browser, and give the scripting in the page access to the file system.<p>I used to love these things. I wrote a bunch of little apps in them.<p>Some examples:<p>https://medium.com/@anht_59851/html-application-hta-a-gui-for-your-scripting-on-windows-bfaacf2c3bdd<p>These still exist, but there are problems with them:<p>1. Coding is a bear. They run in the mshta.exe process, and that spawns an instance of... IE9, I think? There's no "inspect" panel, for instance, and errors just pop a modal with no debugging information.<p>2. Near as I can tell, they use an older version of ECMAScript. "let" doesn't seem to work, not does "addEventListener," etc. I kept getting weird "Syntax Errors" for things that appeared to be valid, contemporary JavaScript.<p>3. I'm quite sure some security software (like on my laptop, issued by employer), blocks these from executing.<p>What's the current-day equivalent of these? I want to write an HTML page complete with CSS and JS, double-click on it from my desktop, have it open in a browser instance of its own, and have access to the file system.<p>I essentially want a way to create little GUI apps, without having to use WinForms.<p>What am I looking for? Is it Electron?<p>(Note: I'm on Windows)