[jimbosis]

> I do think that it would be great if there were a way to tell a web browser through its Dev-thingy to actually serve a folder to itself as if it were served by a bona-fide web server with HTTPS.

I'd like to plug Beaker Browser as an amazing tool for getting started with barebones HTML, CSS, and JS. I would say Beaker marvelously fulfills this wish for a browser to serve a folder to itself.

https://beakerbrowser.com/

Because it is built around the peer-to-peer dat:// protocol, it also ends up being "local-first" regarding web pages that you write with it (as well as sites that you decide to seed).

@staltz has an interesting presentation on the utility of Beaker Browser: https://staltz.com/beaker-frontend-dev-dream-browser/#0

On the other hand, I don't know enough to speak to Beaker's capabilities with XmlHttpRequest.