Developing Windows apps with JavaScript.

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+2 Q:

Developing Windows apps with JavaScript.

I'm currently in the need of developing a Windows application. I want to keep things simple (in the spirit of uTorrent) and I would like the result program to be a single .exe file containing all that it needs.

The program is simple. It just needs some UI. It needs to run for a long period of time (lay there as a tray icon). It needs to do some routine tasks like simple I/O. It also needs to access the internet, specifically some web server.

Apart from these small requirements I would like to write all of it in JavaScript, as I feel more comfortable with it than any other language.

I know there's things like Windows Script Host that let you run JavaScript programs and interact with some Win32 API, but will I be able to do everything I need with Windows Script Host? Can I pack all of the Windows Script Host in a single .exe?

If not, what alternatives do I have for JavaScript?

I'm not 100% but I believe WSH uses JScript or WScript, not JavaScript.

Angelo R. 2010-08-31 14:24:56

JScript is a Microsoft's flavour of JavaScript/ECMAScript. Most people actually just refer to JScript as JavaScript.

Andy E 2010-08-31 14:26:44

JScript and JavaScript are the same thing - they're both ECMAScript. But Microsoft didn't want to interfere with Sun's trademark on "Java" so they called their ECMAScript implementation "JScript." But it's the same language.

EAMann 2010-08-31 14:27:29

I think the languages are pretty much identical at this level (without the DOM etc.). What are the differences?

Luca Matteis 2010-08-31 14:28:05

@Lucas lack of litigation. Same reason J# isn't called Java#.

David Lively 2010-08-31 14:32:18

While it does follow ECMAScript, because it's Microsoft it also introduces other things that don't follow the standard: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/4tc5a343(v=VS.85).aspx

Angelo R. 2010-08-31 14:37:02

@Angelo: likewise, many flavours introduce things that aren't part of the standard. Many things on that list are now compliant and/or part of the spec. Mozilla also implement a lot of non-standard features, such as the ability to call a regular expression as if it were a function.

Andy E 2010-08-31 14:55:16

Or you can install a Apache (or any other http server) on your Windows and run a webpage directly using this and you web browser ?

Shahor 2010-08-31 14:30:20

+2 A:

Aside from Windows Script Host, there are

Windows Desktop Gadgets (Vista and Windows 7 only)
HTML Applications (HTAs)

Both are written with standard web technologies, HTML, JavaScript, Flash, etc. They can also be extended with COM objects/ActiveX controls such as FileSystemObject, WMI, WScript or even ones that you write yourself. Windows Desktop Gadgets have access to a separate API/namespace with various Win32-esque properties and methods.

Andy E 2010-08-31 14:31:49

Ok. I'm not that comfortable with the entire COM object API, but can I do I/O and HTTP requests with it? The internet seems to lack major documentation on these. What about UI and Windows Script Host... couldn't find much of that either.

Luca Matteis 2010-08-31 14:33:48

@Luca: You can create cross domain web requests using XMLHttpRequest in HTAs and Windows Desktop Gadgets. However, I/O will require a higher level interface such as a COM component. You can use WinHTTPRequests from WSH, but they have to be synchronous in most cases.

Andy E 2010-08-31 14:35:26

Why the downvote? This is fine input.

Pekka 2010-08-31 14:35:48

@Pekka: Dunno, it wasn't me :)

Luca Matteis 2010-08-31 14:37:12

@Andy E: Awesome. Do you have good DOCs for this? I would appreciate some UI tutorials as well :)

Luca Matteis 2010-08-31 14:37:56

@Luca: I linked to the Docs for HTAs and WDGs, both those pages have introductory tutorials but I think you'll probably find Google to be a more useful resource than my brain for tutorials on WinHTTP :-)

Andy E 2010-08-31 14:40:20

This is probably getting downvoted because it features evil Micro$oft technology. I have no other explanation.

Pekka 2010-08-31 16:42:28

@Pekka: either that or the other people downvoted here assumed I downvoted them and are being vengeful/petty. In either case, as long as the OP finds it useful it doesn't matter how many votes it gets. Thanks for having my back ;-)

Andy E 2010-08-31 18:10:30

@Andy E: Actually I do find it very useful thanks. Most of the recent answers have nothing to do with my question, and the most up-voted is about AIR which also seems unrelated due to me wanting a simple .exe and not an entire runtime as a dependency.

Luca Matteis 2010-08-31 20:52:44

+2 A:

Internet Explorer introduced the concept of Hypertext Applications in IE 5. It never made a big breakthrough, so resources and documentation are scarce.

Mozilla-backed competitor Prism seems to be alive and well, though, and is definitely worth a look.

Prism is an application that lets users split web applications out of their browser and run them directly on their desktop

Pekka 2010-08-31 14:34:41

+1, I like the look of Prism. Kind of like how HTAs should have been done :-)

Andy E 2010-08-31 14:38:51

@Andy yup. HTAs were a great concept, I loved it when they introduced it back in the day, but they never really got it to take off. Maybe Prism gets it done better!

Pekka 2010-08-31 14:41:07

+3 A:

I think you're looking for Adobe AIR

The Adobe® AIR® 2 runtime enables developers to use HTML, JavaScript, Adobe Flash® software, and ActionScript® to build web applications that run as standalone client applications without the constraints of a browser. ~ The AIR website

Ryan Kinal 2010-08-31 14:39:49

i still need the runtime... that's an extra overhead i would like to avoid

Luca Matteis 2010-08-31 14:46:59

Then go ahead and write your own C++ app which embeds V8 and write all the C++ binding code for it yourself. Or wait until someone else does it. Or, just learn C++ or anything else which works nicely on Windows. You won't improve your skills in other languages by always relying on a JavaScript solution.

Ivo Wetzel 2010-08-31 16:35:22

There's also Rhino, but it requires Java, which is quite bloated: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Rhino_documentation

Ryan Kinal 2010-08-31 16:49:08

I like this, runtime or not. I didn't know AIR does this.

Pekka 2010-08-31 18:24:34

I believe the best way to go is V8 JavaScript Engine provided by Google.

"V8 can run standalone, or can be embedded into any C++ application." - which I believe is perfect for your needs, because you can do most of the stuff in JavaScript and use provided interfaces to communicate with the system.

rochal 2010-08-31 15:52:33

He will still have to write some amount of C++ code, which I think is the part he's afraid of, at least all of his GUI will need some interface to a native toolkit. So in the end he will have to write large amounts of binding code. Overall he will end up writing a hell lot more code just for the sake of being able to use JS.

Ivo Wetzel 2010-08-31 16:29:33

Color me crazy, but its only a short step form Javascript to Java or C#. I'd suggest C# as, on a windows machine, the libraries are already there. You can just copypaste your .exe and let 'er rip.

Will 2010-08-31 18:12:20

Good point. This would definitely make things easy... There are not many ways of doing this with a single .EXE with not too much overhead if you want to stay with Javascript.

Pekka 2010-08-31 18:34:27

idiomatic javascript and idiomatic c# are almost complete opposites.

Matt Briggs 2010-09-01 12:33:37

Are you suggesting that he run JavaScript from *within* a C# executable? (e.g., using WSH through interop and loading the scripts from resources...) Because, that actually does work pretty well. But if you're suggesting that C# is anything like JavaScript...

Shog9 2010-09-01 16:14:33

#Matt syntactically they are very similar. The only true differences that a normal programmer would notice is the difference between the DOM and the framework. Advanced javascript programmers would have issues with type definitions, but I think C# is clearer rather than the way it is in Javascript (i.e., obscure).

Will 2010-09-01 23:07:41

@SHog9 no, I wasn't suggesting that. You have to admit that Javascript syntax is very close to javascript. The major difference is the context (DOM vs. framework).

Will 2010-09-01 23:09:22

@Will: There are similarities (more with the introduction of lambda expressions and now dynamic types), but as Matt notes the *idioms* are still quite different... For instance, a JS programmer might think nothing of creating a dynamic object and passing it in as the sole argument to a function, where it is merged with another such object to produce a set of parameters for the algorithm... A C# programmer would use either multiple, overloaded methods, an instance of a class that defaulted its members, or (with C# 4.0) named parameters. Conceptually these are the same, but the *appearance*...

Shog9 2010-09-01 23:49:12

Why not use Rhino -- JavaScript on the JVM? You can even compile your scripts to .class files and package them into a JAR along with Rhino for easy distribution...

Weston C 2010-08-31 18:14:39

If you want a single .EXE, what runtimes are you okay if they are required pre-requisites?

If you're okay with requiring .NET runtime to be preinstalled, then you do all your work in JScript.NET

zumalifeguard 2010-08-31 18:21:07

I found that there's actually a JavaScript compiler that comes with the .NET framework called jsc.exe.

For more information:

http://www.phpied.com/make-your-javascript-a-windows-exe/

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/7435xtz6(VS.80).aspx

I guess it's not really JavaScript since it introduces extra things like import and even some class syntax which is weird for me. But this works perfectly for me as I will just doing things as I am used to on the web.

Luca Matteis 2010-09-01 12:16:18

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Developing Windows apps with JavaScript.

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