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Web apps in a single, portable, self-updating, vanilla HTML file

hyperclay.com

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Re: Web apps in a single, portable, self-updating, vanilla HTML file

#71

Post by cetinsert »

I would love to have people try building these on https://RTCode.io

The playground has lots of unique features, CLI agent integration for AI to let you collaborate with Claude Code or Codex CLI, etc. You can deploy straight to https://RTEdge.net

The playground has HTML I ↔ O iframe with mostly reload-free 2-way IO sync, built-in service/edge workers with URL imports of ESM, and a whole lot more. You can see some examples under Code > New…

Here is a recent one for accessible multi-OS keyboard shortcuts: https://kbd.rt.ht/?io

Re: Web apps in a single, portable, self-updating, vanilla HTML file

#72

Post by Piskvorrr »

pjmlp wrote: post #36

Someone rediscoved Windows 98 HTA archives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_Application

HTAs were equal parts great (for their time) and terrible (plus they stuck around until IE died): a bog-standard webpage, but IE-only and with local-user process execution powers. Also, the local persistence was...problematic.

Only similar in the vaguest sense.

Re: Web apps in a single, portable, self-updating, vanilla HTML file

#73

Post by BoppreH »

panphora wrote: post #61
BoppreH wrote: post #35

For people who are confused: Hyperclay is a NodeJS server and frontend JS library that allows HTML pages to update their DOM and then replace their own .html source with the updated version. Imagine clicking a checkbox, which adds the `checked` attribute to its element, then using Hyperclay to globally persist this version of `document.body.outerHTML`, so that it's there next time someone visits the page. There's aut…

I added this word-for-word to the home page. Thank you! Note: we are working on a way for a developer to push "DOM-based schema migrations" to all forked apps.

I'm flattered you liked my description so much! It's a really special project, thanks for sharing it.

Re: Web apps in a single, portable, self-updating, vanilla HTML file

#74

Post by muspimerol »

How does versioning work? After you fork an HTML app, is there a way to update it and get newer features without manual intervention?

I'm thinking about the Kanban board example I saw in the demo video. It looks like column re-ordering wasn't supported yet. What if I fork the app, put time into creating my Kanban, then I want to update to a new version that supports column re-ordering?

Re: Web apps in a single, portable, self-updating, vanilla HTML file

#75

Post by frsanti »

panphora wrote: post #58
jauntywundrkind wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making a more read/annotate/write web is near and dear to my heart. There's a lot I find admirable - noble about pages like Hyperclay! But also, it's a distinctly different answer for each page to build its own toolkit for the user (Hyperclay) vs TBL's read-write web. The user-agent ought, imo, afford standard tools that are going to work across web pages, that extend the user agency whatever site they are visiting.

Yes, I agree. My dream would be to one day work on a browser and integrate Hyperclay into it. I believe web apps have been around long enough as a core web technology that browsers should ship with a local web host, knowledge of what a user and user account is, and the ability to persist to disk whatever the user chooses.

In a similar vein, it looks like there is a working group for linked web storage at:

https://www.w3.org/groups/wg/lws/

That would likely have some overlap.

If you were to have an accepted w3c proposal and working implementation in local browser forks, you could potentially chat with the browser teams to add the experimental feature first through a flag users would manually have to turn on, and then later potentially it could get integrated.

Re: Web apps in a single, portable, self-updating, vanilla HTML file

#76

Post by K0balt »

doublerabbit wrote: post #41
weinzierl wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to that the W3C maintained the Amaya "browser" , or web editor how they liked to call it, for like a decade and a half, as their vision for the web. I think it was not just an appealing idea but Amaya itself was a solid implementation for a "testbed" (again, their words). I can see why it died but I still think it is a bit of a shame it did.

I had never heard of Amaya before. > It supports HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0, XHTML Basic, XHTML 1.1, HTTP 1.1, MathML 2.0, many CSS 2 features, and SVG. Perfect. Doesn't need anything else.

Amaya is great when you just need to do some quick edits.

Re: Web apps in a single, portable, self-updating, vanilla HTML file

#80

Post by felipeccastro »

Sammi wrote: post #34

To take this concept one step further towards perfection, you would want to lose the backend completely and persist directly to a git repo using https://isomorphic-git.org/

And if keeping in local storage a list of all pages, you can create an index html automatically in a predefined format which makes it more of a database rather than loose documents.
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