Crossplatform desktop PHP?

Hello & Thanks ,
Is there such a thing as “Crossplatform desktop PHP” ?
Normally I program in HotBasic (freeware programs) .
But I am interested in crossplatform .
So it seems like javascript/html/php are quite platform independent .
Today I noticed a Php-Gtk crossplatform opensource package .
I would like to write programs that run in Browsers (IE , chrome , firefox , etc.) .
So I am looking for the smallest Desktop footprint possible ,
to develop php/html/javascript programs .
And more importantly ,
I am looking for the smallest Desktop footprint possible ,
to run these programs in .

Any advice/direction you can give me will be greatly appreciated .

Thanks…Vernon

PHP is a Server Side language, and so has not relation to your client browser/OS. It does all of it’s processing before anything gets sent to the browser.

In order to run a php program in a browser you first need to set up a web server because browsers can only run what they can fetch from a server, they don’t understand php so the server has do to all the php work. If that is supposed to be a desktop application then you would need to first install a local web server on the machine and that defeats your goal of smallest footprint possible and complicates installation procedure for users.

On other words - php is not the right tool for your job. And why would you want your program to run in a web browser if it’s supposed to be a desktop program? There are other languages much better suited to be run on the desktop and there are solutions to compile the same code for different platforms.

Yes , I know about LocalStorage/html5 and xampp local server .
xamppLite is 400mb .
I have’t yet looked at Flash .
Thanks…vm

If you were talking cross-platform desktop apps I’d suggest looking at Java.

But you say “run in browser” which makes me think you’re wanting to write a web app to run on the desktop.

If it’s simple you could write HTML/Javascript files for people to download to their machines and they would open in their browsers.
Their are database options that might work in this set-up, but AFAIK they aren’t cross-platform.

If you need/want to have access to their system then probably “outside of a browser” would be better.

Hello & Thanks ,
Mittineague : I just discovered that in FireFox has a Tools called ScratchPad ,
where I can open a txt/js/? files and edit/save/saveas them .
Chrome may have something similar I’ll check it out .
…vm