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You can create controls in WIN32 or MFC that would simply be impossible in HTML for a reasonable level of performance

by bbcbasic 10y ago

raverbashing 10y ago
Yes, but this doesn't matter for the majority of applications today
- nodamage 10y ago
  Replace "WIN32 or MFC" with "iOS or Android" and the point still stands, especially on mobile devices where processing power is limited and battery life more important.
ivanhoe 10y ago
Performance yes, you can't compete with that one because browsers don't let you control the low-level stuff. But the speed of development and the ease of doing complex layouts with css is hard to match (when you master css enough, of course), specially if you're trying to do UI from the code directly, without IDE helpers and visual builders.
- millstone 10y ago
  The speed of development is very fast for the first 75%, and comes to a screeching halt for the last 25%. The web stack has no good way to answer basic questions like "does the user have arrow keys" or "what is the current mouse position." That's the point that you start to layer on the "hacks on hacks" that OP references.
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    Can any system tell you that the user has arrow keys?
sangnoir 10y ago
> You can create controls in WIN32 or MFC that would simply be impossible in HTML for a reasonable level of performance Flip side: You can distribute/deploy the host HTML application with reach that will be impossible achieve with a WIN32 or MFC application.
rpeden 10y ago
True, but it should be possible to create high performance UI controls inside an HTML5 canvas element. With canvas, every browser has hardware accelerated immediate mode rendering that could be used to create UI toolkits. Looking around the web, there are some attempts to make this happen, but none of them seem to be hugely popular. Last time I looked into this (years ago), a big blocker was that nothing inside a canvas element is visible to accessibility APIs, so UI rendered in a canvas would be invisible to people using assistive technologies like screen readers.

You can create controls in WIN32 or MFC that would simply be impossible in HTML for a reasonable level of performance

raverbashing 10y ago

Yes, but this doesn't matter for the majority of applications today

nodamage 10y ago
Replace "WIN32 or MFC" with "iOS or Android" and the point still stands, especially on mobile devices where processing power is limited and battery life more important.

ivanhoe 10y ago

Performance yes, you can't compete with that one because browsers don't let you control the low-level stuff. But the speed of development and the ease of doing complex layouts with css is hard to match (when you master css enough, of course), specially if you're trying to do UI from the code directly, without IDE helpers and visual builders.

millstone 10y ago
The speed of development is very fast for the first 75%, and comes to a screeching halt for the last 25%. The web stack has no good way to answer basic questions like "does the user have arrow keys" or "what is the current mouse position." That's the point that you start to layer on the "hacks on hacks" that OP references.
- emodendroket 10y ago
  Can any system tell you that the user has arrow keys?

sangnoir 10y ago

> You can create controls in WIN32 or MFC that would simply be impossible in HTML for a reasonable level of performance Flip side: You can distribute/deploy the host HTML application with reach that will be impossible achieve with a WIN32 or MFC application.

rpeden 10y ago

True, but it should be possible to create high performance UI controls inside an HTML5 canvas element. With canvas, every browser has hardware accelerated immediate mode rendering that could be used to create UI toolkits. Looking around the web, there are some attempts to make this happen, but none of them seem to be hugely popular. Last time I looked into this (years ago), a big blocker was that nothing inside a canvas element is visible to accessibility APIs, so UI rendered in a canvas would be invisible to people using assistive technologies like screen readers.