![\"Hey,](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2019\/02\/q-for-powertip.jpg\" "\\"Hey,")
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Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I clear an HTA window? Hey, DF. Well, to tell you the truth, if you\u2019d ever seen at least one of the Scripting Houses you wouldn\u2019t be asking us<\/I> if we knew how to clear a window; it\u2019s pretty obviously some of us don\u2019t. (In our defense, though, if we keep the window clean then birds have a terrible habit of flying headlong into it. Which, of course, is also why we don\u2019t vacuum the rug very often: we don\u2019t want birds flying headlong into the rug, either.)<\/P>\n We\u2019re actually going to answer your question by showing you two scripts: one script that clears the entire window and another that clears only part<\/I> of the window. Why are we going to do that? Well, we can\u2019t tell you that just yet; that would spoil the surprise, wouldn\u2019t it?<\/P>\n Let\u2019s start off with a simple HTA, one that features a button that, when clicked, clears the entire HTA window:<\/P> <SCRIPT LANGUAGE=”VBScript”>\n Sub ClearWindow\n document.body.InnerHTML = “”\n End Sub \n<\/SCRIPT><\/p>\n <body>\n <input id=runbutton type=”button” value=”Clear” onClick=”ClearWindow”>\n<\/body>\n<\/PRE>\n You\u2019re right: there isn\u2019t<\/I> much to this. We start off by specifying a title for our window, using this line of code:<\/P> We then have some optional lines of code that are used to configure various properties of the HTA itself. We won\u2019t discuss those in any detail today; for more information you might check out the HTA Developers Center<\/B><\/A> or the Scripting Week 3 webcast Going Beyond the Command Line with HTML Applications<\/B><\/A>.<\/P>\n As you can see, the body of the HTA consists of a single element: a button labeled Clear<\/B>:<\/P> Click that button, and a subroutine named ClearWindow will fire up.<\/P>\n And what happens inside that subroutine? Not much; in fact, all we do is set the InnerHTML property of the document.body<\/B> object to nothing (\u201c\u201d):<\/P> And that, in turn, clears the HTA window. You want to clear an HTA window? Then just set the document.body.InnerHTML property to an empty string.<\/P>\n But wait, don\u2019t go yet: we need to emphasize that this really clears<\/I> the HTA window. For example, here\u2019s what our HTA looks like before we click the button:<\/P> Note<\/B>. Of course, you can always restore the user interface by pressing F5<\/B>, thus refreshing the HTA window.<\/P><\/TD><\/TR><\/TBODY><\/TABLE>\n Here\u2019s the revised code:<\/P> <SCRIPT LANGUAGE=”VBScript”>\n Sub ClearWindow\n DataArea.InnerHTML = “”\n End Sub \n<\/SCRIPT><\/p>\n <body>\n <input id=runbutton type=”button” value=”Clear” onClick=”ClearWindow”>\n <p>\n <span id=DataArea>This is the data area.<\/span>\n<\/body>\n<\/PRE>\n For the most part we\u2019ve done two things here. First, we added a <span><\/B> tag and given this span the id DataArea. A span, as you probably know, is a named-area of the HTA that we can dynamically modify; for example, using a script we can add text (and HTML formatting) to the span.<\/P>\n Or, we can clear<\/I> the span of all text and HTML formatting. That\u2019s the second change we made to our HTA: we\u2019ve rewritten the ClearWindow subroutine so that instead of clearing the entire window it clears only the DataArea span:<\/P> Why did we do that? Well, here\u2019s what our revised HTA looks like when it first loads:<\/P> Now, here\u2019s what the HTA looks like after we click the button:<\/P> And, yes, that also means that no birds will fly headlong into this HTA, either. One less thing to worry about!<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I clear an HTA window?— DF Hey, DF. Well, to tell you the truth, if you\u2019d ever seen at least one of the Scripting Houses you wouldn\u2019t be asking us if we knew how to clear a window; it\u2019s pretty obviously some of us don\u2019t. (In our defense, though, if […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":595,"featured_media":87096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3,4,5,30],"class_list":["post-68563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scripting","tag-scripting-guy","tag-scripting-techniques","tag-vbscript","tag-web-pages-and-htas"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":" Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I clear an HTA window?— DF Hey, DF. Well, to tell you the truth, if you\u2019d ever seen at least one of the Scripting Houses you wouldn\u2019t be asking us if we knew how to clear a window; it\u2019s pretty obviously some of us don\u2019t. (In our defense, though, if […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/595"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
— DF<\/P>![\"Spacer\"](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2019\/05\/spacer.gif\")
![\"Hey,](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2019\/02\/a-for-powertip.jpg\" "\\"Hey,")
![\"Script](\"http:\/\/img.microsoft.com\/library\/media\/1033\/technet\/images\/scriptcenter\/ad.jpg\" "\\"Script")
<\/A> \n<html>\n<head>\n<title>HTA Test<\/title>\n<HTA:APPLICATION \n ID=”objTest” \n APPLICATIONNAME=”Clear Window”\n SCROLL=”yes”\n SINGLEINSTANCE=”yes”\n>\n<\/head><\/p>\n
<title>HTA Test<\/title>\n<\/PRE>\n
<input id=runbutton type=”button” value=”Clear” onClick=”ClearWindow”>\n<\/PRE>\n
document.body.InnerHTML = “”\n<\/PRE>\n
![\"HTA\"](\"http:\/\/img.microsoft.com\/library\/media\/1033\/technet\/images\/scriptcenter\/qanda\/clear.jpg\")
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And here\u2019s what it looks like after<\/I> we click the button:<\/P>![\"HTA\"](\"http:\/\/img.microsoft.com\/library\/media\/1033\/technet\/images\/scriptcenter\/qanda\/clear2.jpg\")
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The window\u2019s been cleared all right: in fact, everything<\/I> has been erased, including our Clear<\/B> button. There will likely be times when you want everything – including your interface elements – to be erased. However, there will also be times when you just want certain items – say, data retrieved from a previous script – to be erased while other items (such as buttons) are left alone. So let\u2019s show you a variation of this script, one that erases only a portion of the HTA window.<\/P>\n\n<\/THEAD>\n\n
\n \n <\/DIV>\n<html>\n<head>\n<title>HTA Test<\/title>\n<HTA:APPLICATION \n ID=”objTest” \n APPLICATIONNAME=”Clear Window”\n SCROLL=”yes”\n SINGLEINSTANCE=”yes”\n>\n<\/head><\/p>\n
Sub ClearWindow\n DataArea.InnerHTML = “”\nEnd Sub\n<\/PRE>\n
![\"HTA\"](\"http:\/\/img.microsoft.com\/library\/media\/1033\/technet\/images\/scriptcenter\/qanda\/clear3.jpg\")
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As you can see, our span (located just below the button) features the words This is the data area<\/B>.<\/P>\n \n
Ah, now you get it: we cleared the DataArea, but left the window unchanged. That means our UI elements (in this simple example, that\u2019s just the Clear<\/B> button) are still there and still available for use.<\/P>\n