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First, of course you can make a living out of desktop applications. In the echo chamber of HN you could maybe get the idea that they are no longer relevant, but
by rxlim 10y ago
First, of course you can make a living out of desktop applications. In the echo chamber of HN you could maybe get the idea that they are no longer relevant, but out in the real world millions of people need to do real work, but don't have a stable connection to the Internet.
Second, If you decide to create a desktop application, then make it native. I must strongly advise against using any of these "web frameworks" e.g. Electron, QTwebkit etc. to create desktop applications. They are slow, bloated and probably contain many security holes because of the huge complexity of browser engines.
They only exists because many developers don't know anything else than web development, instead of learning new skills they created this abomination. One earlier post said that minumum an i3 was required for the apps to remain snappy, think about it, that is just ridiculous especially in a time where PC's are upgraded much less frequently than they used to be. I would NEVER install an application created using a web framework.
I have good experinces with Rust and Golang when creating native applications for multiple OS.
- derefr 10y ago> They only exists because many developers don't know anything else than web development I know how to write native apps in C# with WPF, Obj-C with Cocoa, C++ with Qt, Erlang with WxWidgets, and even in pure Tcl/Tk. I still prefer using HTML5 to any/all of those. It's about multi-platform portability, where "the web" is itself one of the targeted platforms. > I would NEVER install an application created using a web framework. Do you use web apps in a browser? Gmail or Outlook.com, say? Why would them adopting more native UX controls make you stop using them, then? If it's about the cost in non-shared runtime memory (i.e. basically running 5 separate instances of Chromium for five "apps"), this can be fixed; look, for example, at how the Chrome App Launcher works in Canary. Window-mode Chrome Apps are basically equivalent to Electron apps, but run as sandboxes under a common single-process runtime (Chrome) rather than each being a process of their own.
- dvdkon 10y agoI use Gmail and other web apps, because I'm accessing remote data through them, and running remote apps to do so is a good idea IMO. However, I think "the Web" is not a good platform for native-like apps. It's not only slow and resource-hungry (I can edit pictures and video reasonably, yet web apps still stutter and hang up), it was also never designed for app GUIs. HTML is a nice text markup language, but it was never meant for GUIs. CSS is nice for styling text, but it's now used for much more. Layout is torn between HTML and CSS. And web apps don't "fit in" with their appearance, and I value consistency in desktop apps a lot. With Qt/GTK, I can change a system-wide theme, and all apps will fit in with each other, which is something web apps can't offer. And while creating new frameworks may help programmers, it doesn't solve the fundamental issue that the web is not meant for native-esque apps.
- fidz 10y agoWhat GUI Library do you recommend?
- vram22 10y agoFor Python, wxPython is good. Dropbox desktop clients are written in it, IIRC, and so are many other apps. Take a look at the demos in the Docs and Demos (separate EXE) that you can download from the wxPython site. Pretty good and gives an idea of wxPython's capabilities. For C++, wxWidgets (which wxPython is a wrapper for) or Qt should be good. Andy Brice, mentioned as a desktop product ISV in this thread, uses C++ and Qt and deploys to more than one desktop platform. IIRC Skype desktop was written in Qt. There are also other GUI toolkit choices which are less mainstream and some may be less stable/documented/maintained. Edit to add: Don't know about PyQt which is a wrapper for Qt, like wxPython is for wxWidgets.
- hermitcrab 10y agoIs wxWidgets still under active development? The last 'stable' release was in 2014.
- vram22 10y agoSorry, only saw your question now. Not sure. Need to check. Update: both Wikipedia and the wxWidgets site show a release this Feb 2016.