SELF-CONTAINED APPLICATIONS THAT ARE APPLIED TO BE RECEIVED BY AND PROCESSED WITHIN A BROWSER ENVIRONMENT AND THAT HAVE A FIRST PACKAGE THAT INCLUDES A MANIFEST FILE AND AN ARCHIVE OF FILES INCLUDING A MARKUP LANGUAGE FILE AND A SECOND PACKAGE

An implementation of a self-contained application may be distributed and automatically executed within a network client environment, such as within a web browser environment. The implementation of the self-contained application includes a first package that includes a manifest and an archive of files. The archive of files includes a markup language file that is the initial file to be processed and that includes instructions for initiating execution of the application. In the implementation, the archive of files also includes other files needed to execute the application and a second package that may be of the same type as the first package. The manifest file includes an initial file identifier that instructs the application to process the markup language initial file before processing the other files.