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I have no experience with either of these. I read this as "that framework which makes native applications for most major platforms now targets the web browser".

I have no experience with either of these. I read this as "that framework which makes native applications for most major platforms now targets the web browser". If the above is even 2/3rds what happens, what stops QT from taking over all multi-platform targeted applications "one <toolkit> to rule them all" style?

sp332 8y ago
Well, there's nothing stopping other frameworks from being ported to wasm as well. Then they'd be back on a more even playing field.
- electricslpnsld 8y ago
  > Well, there's nothing stopping other frameworks from being ported to wasm as well. I for one am excited to see Electron to get ported to wasm so we can complete the circle
  - sho_hn 8y ago
    The ultimate irony of course being that Electron was originally a Qt app. KHTML written against Qt by the KDE folks (some of whom turned into Qt folks) -> forked into WebKit by Apple when they needed a browser, using a shim layer to work on Cocoa, which grew into a platform abstraction framework -> forked into Blink, used in Electron. Qt begat its own competitor.
jcelerier 8y ago
People who think that just because it's in C++ it's harder than the average web app to write, and lack of ability to deploy e.g. on macos without owning a mac or windows without having a windows partition (though there are solutions, but nothing as easy as what electron proposes). I also noticed that a lot of people tend to choose electron arguing that unlike Qt (which is under LGPL), Electron is under MIT, but it seems that they are not aware that it's only the electron scaffolding part which is MIT, not the whole electron framework which includes chromium, ffmpeg which are also LGPL. Though overall I'd wager that there's an order magnitude more cross-platform single-toolkit apps built with Qt than with other frameworks.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- funfunfunction 8y ago
  Do most people choose Electron for the licensing or because of the cross platform benefits of a JavaScript codebase?
  - electricslpnsld 8y ago
    Probably neither -- I'd wager that Electron's popularity among web-centric companies is due to the prevalence of JavaScript programmers in these shops. With Electron there is no need to hire anyone new (or eat the cost of programmers retooling) to roll out a desktop app.
  - deltron3030 8y ago
    It's the design culture JS is embedded in, more creative people, or full stack devs who can make it work but also pretty.
- seba_dos1 8y ago
  I have no idea about other platforms, but on Linux it's extremely easy to set up a cross-compilling environment for building macOS, Windows and Android applications. I'm not exactly sure if I want to have the applications I use be written by people who can't even bother to do one-time setup of their compiler toolchains if there's no ready-made script on GitHub that does it automatically, like there are for Electron.
  - jcelerier 8y ago
    how would it work on macos ? If you have graphical apps you have to link against the various Cocoa frameworks, and those are (legally) only available on mac machines
  - chocolatebunny 8y ago
    cross-compiling isn't the major issue. It's the toolkit. Yeah a cross-compiling C/C++ environment is fairly straightforward to do especially if you just want to do a commandline utility that can be done with the C or C++ standard library. But having any sort of GUI toolkit (such as Qt).
oever 8y ago
Because on each platform it has to compete for mindshare with the platform that the platform owner promotes.
goatlover 8y ago
How fundamentally different would that be from what Flash or Java were doing? You lose HTML/CSS as your universal, open GUI on the web with all it's built-in advantages (SEO, hyperlinking, accessibility) in favor of some byte-compiled GUI using canvas to draw itself.
- nostalgeek 8y ago
  In theory it is more secure than Flash and "more open". Flash was bad because it was a security nightmare even "sandboxed" and the player was closed source. Nothing prevents either ActionScript or Java from compiling to web assembly though. Flash API are close to Web API so Flash could absolutely export to WASM. Now is Adobe interested in this is the question.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Nothing, but now since WebAssembly is open bytecode format everyone is happy. The browser is destined to become a general purpose VM, only if our benevolent overloads don't want to fully pursuit this road.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- CyberDildonics 8y ago
  Webasm is not limited to a contained program that only draws to the canvas. It is meant to be able to do computations at near native speeds and be called from javascript. Flash and Java were not the same thing, they weren't meant to augment slow parts of java script. There is nothing you are seeing here that could not be done with javascript already, it would just run slower.
  - goatlover 8y ago
    > There is nothing you are seeing here that could not be done with javascript already, it would just run slower. Yeah, but there isn't much temptation to make QT-like widgets on Canvas with JS, since JS is fully integrated with the DOM. While the temptation for web assembly is to do exactly that, and thus the parent question.
21 8y ago
> what stops QT from taking over all multi-platform targeted applications The fact that Electron is much better. I know this in a highly unpopular opinion here. I've programmed in them all (MFC/wxWidgets/QT/WinForms/WPF) and HTML/CSS/JS is just so much easier.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  CSS3 hackary better than native frameworks?! Not really. Maybe when I get to see Blend implemented with WebComponents.
  - dimgl 8y ago
    Hackery*, and I'm not sure why the hate towards CSS3. With a few lines of code I can build a pretty good looking responsive UI that doesn't take hours to polish.
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      Yeah, when running on a specific browser version targeting a single OS.
      - pcwalton 8y ago
        That's hardly true when it comes to CSS3 stuff that's been around for a decade. Moreover, it's unfair to insist on portability when comparing native vs. Web without doing the same on the native side.
        pjmlp 8y ago
        Only if the only browsers one cares about are latest version of Chrome and Safari. There plenty of deployment scenarios with other kinds of browsers. Of course it is fair, using something like Qt, wxWidgets, or even roll our own was never as complicated to get pixel perfect UI across OSes.
        8y ago

sp332 8y ago

Well, there's nothing stopping other frameworks from being ported to wasm as well. Then they'd be back on a more even playing field.

electricslpnsld 8y ago
> Well, there's nothing stopping other frameworks from being ported to wasm as well. I for one am excited to see Electron to get ported to wasm so we can complete the circle
- sho_hn 8y ago
  The ultimate irony of course being that Electron was originally a Qt app. KHTML written against Qt by the KDE folks (some of whom turned into Qt folks) -> forked into WebKit by Apple when they needed a browser, using a shim layer to work on Cocoa, which grew into a platform abstraction framework -> forked into Blink, used in Electron. Qt begat its own competitor.

jcelerier 8y ago

People who think that just because it's in C++ it's harder than the average web app to write, and lack of ability to deploy e.g. on macos without owning a mac or windows without having a windows partition (though there are solutions, but nothing as easy as what electron proposes). I also noticed that a lot of people tend to choose electron arguing that unlike Qt (which is under LGPL), Electron is under MIT, but it seems that they are not aware that it's only the electron scaffolding part which is MIT, not the whole electron framework which includes chromium, ffmpeg which are also LGPL. Though overall I'd wager that there's an order magnitude more cross-platform single-toolkit apps built with Qt than with other frameworks.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
funfunfunction 8y ago
Do most people choose Electron for the licensing or because of the cross platform benefits of a JavaScript codebase?
- electricslpnsld 8y ago
  Probably neither -- I'd wager that Electron's popularity among web-centric companies is due to the prevalence of JavaScript programmers in these shops. With Electron there is no need to hire anyone new (or eat the cost of programmers retooling) to roll out a desktop app.
- deltron3030 8y ago
  It's the design culture JS is embedded in, more creative people, or full stack devs who can make it work but also pretty.
seba_dos1 8y ago
I have no idea about other platforms, but on Linux it's extremely easy to set up a cross-compilling environment for building macOS, Windows and Android applications. I'm not exactly sure if I want to have the applications I use be written by people who can't even bother to do one-time setup of their compiler toolchains if there's no ready-made script on GitHub that does it automatically, like there are for Electron.
- jcelerier 8y ago
  how would it work on macos ? If you have graphical apps you have to link against the various Cocoa frameworks, and those are (legally) only available on mac machines
- chocolatebunny 8y ago
  cross-compiling isn't the major issue. It's the toolkit. Yeah a cross-compiling C/C++ environment is fairly straightforward to do especially if you just want to do a commandline utility that can be done with the C or C++ standard library. But having any sort of GUI toolkit (such as Qt).

oever 8y ago

Because on each platform it has to compete for mindshare with the platform that the platform owner promotes.

goatlover 8y ago

How fundamentally different would that be from what Flash or Java were doing? You lose HTML/CSS as your universal, open GUI on the web with all it's built-in advantages (SEO, hyperlinking, accessibility) in favor of some byte-compiled GUI using canvas to draw itself.

nostalgeek 8y ago
In theory it is more secure than Flash and "more open". Flash was bad because it was a security nightmare even "sandboxed" and the player was closed source. Nothing prevents either ActionScript or Java from compiling to web assembly though. Flash API are close to Web API so Flash could absolutely export to WASM. Now is Adobe interested in this is the question.
pjmlp 8y ago
Nothing, but now since WebAssembly is open bytecode format everyone is happy. The browser is destined to become a general purpose VM, only if our benevolent overloads don't want to fully pursuit this road.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
CyberDildonics 8y ago
Webasm is not limited to a contained program that only draws to the canvas. It is meant to be able to do computations at near native speeds and be called from javascript. Flash and Java were not the same thing, they weren't meant to augment slow parts of java script. There is nothing you are seeing here that could not be done with javascript already, it would just run slower.
- goatlover 8y ago
  > There is nothing you are seeing here that could not be done with javascript already, it would just run slower. Yeah, but there isn't much temptation to make QT-like widgets on Canvas with JS, since JS is fully integrated with the DOM. While the temptation for web assembly is to do exactly that, and thus the parent question.

21 8y ago

> what stops QT from taking over all multi-platform targeted applications The fact that Electron is much better. I know this in a highly unpopular opinion here. I've programmed in them all (MFC/wxWidgets/QT/WinForms/WPF) and HTML/CSS/JS is just so much easier.

pjmlp 8y ago
CSS3 hackary better than native frameworks?! Not really. Maybe when I get to see Blend implemented with WebComponents.
- dimgl 8y ago
  Hackery*, and I'm not sure why the hate towards CSS3. With a few lines of code I can build a pretty good looking responsive UI that doesn't take hours to polish.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Yeah, when running on a specific browser version targeting a single OS.
    - pcwalton 8y ago
      That's hardly true when it comes to CSS3 stuff that's been around for a decade. Moreover, it's unfair to insist on portability when comparing native vs. Web without doing the same on the native side.
      - pjmlp 8y ago
        Only if the only browsers one cares about are latest version of Chrome and Safari. There plenty of deployment scenarios with other kinds of browsers. Of course it is fair, using something like Qt, wxWidgets, or even roll our own was never as complicated to get pixel perfect UI across OSes.
        8y ago