The sad thing is that those apps' HTML and JS probably are standards-compliant, so supporting Slack, Teams, VSCode, (Electron) Skype, etc in a Firefox-based version of Electron should be possible and very straightforward - yet it probably won't happen.

What's sad is that Windows 98 fully supported desktop-based HTML+JS apps ("HTA Applications"), with access to native resources (using COM via `new ActiveXObject`) and it works with IE11 still - Microsoft just never pitched it as a serious development platform for some reason. Just imagine what today's world would be like if Microsoft did pitch HTA as a successor to VB6 (instead of the quickly-abandoned WinForms platform, now barely on life-support) (I'm mostly thinking we wouldn't be stuck with excessive memory consumption in Slack, and these apps would be able to use things like native context-menus and accessibility features)

> Just imagine what today's world would be like if Microsoft did pitch HTA

That would have been a security nightmare.

Electron is pretty much the same nightmare anyway. Just because it runs in chromium doesn't mean it preserves the sandbox. All electron apps have full access to your filesystem and os, even from their chromium window context.

Microsoft rightfully decided not to push a garbage app platform. It couldn't know someone else would do so later.

WinForms was never "quickly abandoned" ... MFC has been the defacto standard for Windows UI since Win 3.1

WinForms did not receive any significant updates after .NET Framework 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005 - integration with the new User32 controls added in Windows 7 was only through downloaded optional redistributable DLLs. Ever since the .NET Framework 3.0 (and until UWP) Microsoft was selling WPF as the way to build Windows desktop applications without C/C++.