7 ms·

My "go to GUI" is a web app -- I can't imagine anything I'd write a GUI app for these days.

IgorPartola 9y ago
Text editor, video, audio editor, system widgets and settings, web browser, terminal emulator, git GUI client, crypto coin wallet, chat client, games, document editor, security focused software a la Keybase client.
- tempay 9y ago
  > I'd write a GUI app for It's unlikely that cabalamat would attempt making most of those and the others could definitely be done as a web/electron app if desired.
  - JustSomeNobody 9y ago
    > ... and the others could definitely be done as a web/electron app if desired. But probably shouldn't because we don't produce enough renewable energy yet. There's still something to be said about using TRUE native apps.
    - cabalamat 9y ago
      I agree that electron is a bloated resource hog. But if you're running a web browser anyway (I always am) then it's not a big deal to have a web app with the server running locally and the client being a browser tab.
  - IgorPartola 9y ago
    Well sure. That is to say that Qt/Wx/GTK/etc. are as useless to cabalamat as to a Ukrainian plumber. In other words, that isn't saying much. If you don't write desktop apps, you wouldn't use a desktop app GUI toolkit, but that's a tautology. But cabalamat's comment implied that all desktop GUI toolkits are now useless because we have the web, which is a fallacy of generalizing personal experience to everyone else.
    - cabalamat 9y ago
      > But cabalamat's comment implied that all desktop GUI toolkits are now useless because we have the web, which is a fallacy of generalizing personal experience to everyone else. Not useless in general, just useless for me I once wrote a Python program to compile GUIs[1] -- you input a description of the GUI as a text file and it outputs Python code that implements the GUI in Tkinter. I dusted this off for a project last year but eventually decided that making it web-based would be easier to write, look nicer, and have more functionality. Obviously if other people find WxPython useful, good luck to them. 1: see https://github.com/cabalamat/parrot https://github.com/cabalamat/parrot
  - cabalamat 9y ago
    > It's unlikely that cabalamat would attempt making most of those and the others could definitely be done as a web/electron app if desired. I'd write a web app and expose it on 127.0.0.1:someport rather than electron (which is bloated). Going down IgorPartola's list: Text editor - I'd probably make this terminal-based using curses. Then I could easily use it on a remote server I'm ssh'd into. video, audio editor - I've no plans/desires to write anything like these system widgets and settings - a web app is highly suitable for editing system settings web browser - far too big a project for me! terminal emulator - plenty of good ones around already. I mostly use KDE's konsole. git GUI client - I've recently been adding some git functionality to my catwiki wiki software (a web app) https://github.com/cabalamat/catwiki https://github.com/cabalamat/catwiki crypto coin wallet - web app chat client - web app or terminal-based games - I've considered writing a hex-based board wargame as a web app document editor - my catwiki wiki software is this, I suppose security focused software a la Keybase client - the last time I wrote security software was a zero-user-interface email encryption system. If I did something like that in future, any interface would be web based
- sfifs 9y ago
  the point is HTML5/CSS/JS nowadays provides superior UI experience to traditional UI frameworks. In many of the categories above, there are electron/webview based applications that's very popular. Text editor, document editor -> VS Code/Atom terminal emulator -> Google's terminal emulator git GUI client -> GitHub client is electron based chat client -> slack is electron based games -> lots of web based
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    The only thing superior about HTML/CSS/JS GUI are its ease of deployment and portability characteristics. As a UI platform, it feels like a huge step back from modern desktop GUI APIs, like we are doing UI programming in the 90s again.
    - sfifs 9y ago
      And I feel the other way around. "Modern Desktop GUI" feels clunky and archaic to me :-) Like menus and toolbars and the "ribbon" ajd the status bar and those clunky desktop widgets...
      - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
        That is a UI design issue: you don’t gave to use those, and if you do, it’s up to you to use them right. Web comes with a lot of limitations, many of those widgets obviously don’t make sense in the browser; heck they probably don’t make sense on the desktop but that is less obvious. With web, simplicity is enforced out of nescessary limitation, and this has turned out to be good for users. From a programming perspective, modern desktop UI libraries are much more powerful and have less limitations. How you use that power is up to you and your UXD, however.
      - coldtea 9y ago
        It's because you have been conditioned to have low expectations by web apps.
        9y ago
rburhum 9y ago
how about the very browser you are using to read this?
- pc86 9y ago
  What are the odds cabalamat will need to write a web browser from scratch?
  - cabalamat 9y ago
    None
zwieback 9y ago
I'm in my 50s but not trying to be stuck in my ways so this year my development goal is to learn web app development. Interestingly, I will learn it from my mentee, who's been doing a great job using browser-based GUIs for a fleet of test and production machinery. Guess I'm the mentee now...
- mmargerum 9y ago
  49 here. Old c / c++ salt. Self taught go, js, and vue. I love it. Always fun to learn new approaches . After build reactive uis it will be hard to go back to building them the traditional way
fencepost 9y ago
It's been a long time since I looked at wxpython, but does it still have a wxWebKit or similar that you could use to wrap your web app into a local compiled executable? Edit: at a computer, this would be wx.html2, but it's a wrapper for the native platform's browser components so would vary from system to system.
sireat 9y ago
How do you keep sane in web-app development? Rather what is the normal workflow for making UI in web-apps? How do you keep the abstractions from leaking over? It seems you need to keep all the CSS quirks in your head to be productive. As a counterpoint in something like WPF, I do not need to know much or anything about XAML to produce a usable UI quickly that will not break in bizarre ways. Same goes for PyQT, a few hours starting from scratch(ie not knowing anything about PyQT) and you can make something usable. WxPython same thing, classes in a control such as wx.dataview look normal enough.
- cabalamat 9y ago
  > It seems you need to keep all the CSS quirks in your head to be productive. Bootstrap does away with a lot of them.

Text editor, video, audio editor, system widgets and settings, web browser, terminal emulator, git GUI client, crypto coin wallet, chat client, games, document editor, security focused software a la Keybase client.

tempay 9y ago
> I'd write a GUI app for It's unlikely that cabalamat would attempt making most of those and the others could definitely be done as a web/electron app if desired.
- JustSomeNobody 9y ago
  > ... and the others could definitely be done as a web/electron app if desired. But probably shouldn't because we don't produce enough renewable energy yet. There's still something to be said about using TRUE native apps.
  - cabalamat 9y ago
    I agree that electron is a bloated resource hog. But if you're running a web browser anyway (I always am) then it's not a big deal to have a web app with the server running locally and the client being a browser tab.
- IgorPartola 9y ago
  Well sure. That is to say that Qt/Wx/GTK/etc. are as useless to cabalamat as to a Ukrainian plumber. In other words, that isn't saying much. If you don't write desktop apps, you wouldn't use a desktop app GUI toolkit, but that's a tautology. But cabalamat's comment implied that all desktop GUI toolkits are now useless because we have the web, which is a fallacy of generalizing personal experience to everyone else.
  - cabalamat 9y ago
    > But cabalamat's comment implied that all desktop GUI toolkits are now useless because we have the web, which is a fallacy of generalizing personal experience to everyone else. Not useless in general, just useless for me I once wrote a Python program to compile GUIs[1] -- you input a description of the GUI as a text file and it outputs Python code that implements the GUI in Tkinter. I dusted this off for a project last year but eventually decided that making it web-based would be easier to write, look nicer, and have more functionality. Obviously if other people find WxPython useful, good luck to them. 1: see https://github.com/cabalamat/parrot https://github.com/cabalamat/parrot
- cabalamat 9y ago
  > It's unlikely that cabalamat would attempt making most of those and the others could definitely be done as a web/electron app if desired. I'd write a web app and expose it on 127.0.0.1:someport rather than electron (which is bloated). Going down IgorPartola's list: Text editor - I'd probably make this terminal-based using curses. Then I could easily use it on a remote server I'm ssh'd into. video, audio editor - I've no plans/desires to write anything like these system widgets and settings - a web app is highly suitable for editing system settings web browser - far too big a project for me! terminal emulator - plenty of good ones around already. I mostly use KDE's konsole. git GUI client - I've recently been adding some git functionality to my catwiki wiki software (a web app) https://github.com/cabalamat/catwiki https://github.com/cabalamat/catwiki crypto coin wallet - web app chat client - web app or terminal-based games - I've considered writing a hex-based board wargame as a web app document editor - my catwiki wiki software is this, I suppose security focused software a la Keybase client - the last time I wrote security software was a zero-user-interface email encryption system. If I did something like that in future, any interface would be web based
sfifs 9y ago
the point is HTML5/CSS/JS nowadays provides superior UI experience to traditional UI frameworks. In many of the categories above, there are electron/webview based applications that's very popular. Text editor, document editor -> VS Code/Atom terminal emulator -> Google's terminal emulator git GUI client -> GitHub client is electron based chat client -> slack is electron based games -> lots of web based
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  The only thing superior about HTML/CSS/JS GUI are its ease of deployment and portability characteristics. As a UI platform, it feels like a huge step back from modern desktop GUI APIs, like we are doing UI programming in the 90s again.
  - sfifs 9y ago
    And I feel the other way around. "Modern Desktop GUI" feels clunky and archaic to me :-) Like menus and toolbars and the "ribbon" ajd the status bar and those clunky desktop widgets...
    - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
      That is a UI design issue: you don’t gave to use those, and if you do, it’s up to you to use them right. Web comes with a lot of limitations, many of those widgets obviously don’t make sense in the browser; heck they probably don’t make sense on the desktop but that is less obvious. With web, simplicity is enforced out of nescessary limitation, and this has turned out to be good for users. From a programming perspective, modern desktop UI libraries are much more powerful and have less limitations. How you use that power is up to you and your UXD, however.
    - coldtea 9y ago
      It's because you have been conditioned to have low expectations by web apps.
      - 9y ago

rburhum 9y ago

how about the very browser you are using to read this?

pc86 9y ago
What are the odds cabalamat will need to write a web browser from scratch?
- cabalamat 9y ago
  None

zwieback 9y ago

I'm in my 50s but not trying to be stuck in my ways so this year my development goal is to learn web app development. Interestingly, I will learn it from my mentee, who's been doing a great job using browser-based GUIs for a fleet of test and production machinery. Guess I'm the mentee now...

mmargerum 9y ago
49 here. Old c / c++ salt. Self taught go, js, and vue. I love it. Always fun to learn new approaches . After build reactive uis it will be hard to go back to building them the traditional way

fencepost 9y ago

It's been a long time since I looked at wxpython, but does it still have a wxWebKit or similar that you could use to wrap your web app into a local compiled executable? Edit: at a computer, this would be wx.html2, but it's a wrapper for the native platform's browser components so would vary from system to system.

sireat 9y ago

How do you keep sane in web-app development? Rather what is the normal workflow for making UI in web-apps? How do you keep the abstractions from leaking over? It seems you need to keep all the CSS quirks in your head to be productive. As a counterpoint in something like WPF, I do not need to know much or anything about XAML to produce a usable UI quickly that will not break in bizarre ways. Same goes for PyQT, a few hours starting from scratch(ie not knowing anything about PyQT) and you can make something usable. WxPython same thing, classes in a control such as wx.dataview look normal enough.

cabalamat 9y ago
> It seems you need to keep all the CSS quirks in your head to be productive. Bootstrap does away with a lot of them.