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Ask HN: How to do cross platform GUI?

• chuckmcknight 6y ago
  For native apps, I've had success using: wxWidgets (C++) / wxPython (Python) Qt (C++) / PyQT (Python) Mike Driscoll has a recent ebook on wxPython that is a good jumpstart if you are familiar with Python. There are a host of other resources for Qt/PyQt available via Google. You can, of course, use any of the NodeJS frameworks as well. In the absence of any clear requirements, any of these will work.
• forgotmypw17 6y ago
  You're using it right now... If you're careful, you could build something which works on every desktop starting with mid-1990s. For newer platforms, if you want it to be a "true desktop app", you could bundle the HTTP server. Whatever your platform, there are many options.
  • anang 6y ago
    Interestingly enough I’m actually posting from an iOS app :) I am talking about a true desktop app, not a web app. Are desktop apps dead?
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • unnouinceput 6y ago
      No they aren't. And they'll never be, unless a new operating system will be used by everybody. In current situation desktop apps will solve problems that are impossible to solve by web apps (access to hardware being the main one, performance is the next)
  • burntoutfire 6y ago
    Just be careful not to end up with a buggy and laggy mess like for example the desktop MS Teams...
• tlack 6y ago
  It all depends on the nature of your application. A video editor and a command line utility are so different! Sounds like you already know the big players so I won't repeat them. Instead, here are some off-kilter ideas: 1. Casual use, general interest, notification-requiring, simple single-file data requirements, tolerant of desktop / mobile split sessions? Try making a chat bot for Telegram, FB, Discord, Slack.. 2. Dynamic, visualization-focused UI with simple options that need to be tweaked interactively? Try Imgui[0] or Godot[1] 3. Scientific or data-centric stuff pulling in data from here and there, but meant for interactive exploration? Try Wolfram / Mathematica or an IPython notebook / GoogleColab [0] https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/wiki/Software-using-dear-imgui https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/wiki/Software-using-dear-im... [1] https://medium.com/swlh/what-makes-godot-engine-great-for-advance-gui-applications-b1cfb941df3b https://medium.com/swlh/what-makes-godot-engine-great-for-ad...
  • anang 6y ago
    You’re right, I definitely could have been more specific. Something along the lines of an office app. Cool recommendations, thanks!
  • fancythat 6y ago
    You should definitely try Godot as tlack recommended.
• probinso 6y ago
  Build a web site
  • anang 6y ago
    I’m assuming you mean a web application, however I am looking specifically for resources regarding desktop app development, I’m a pretty confident web dev, so that as an option is pretty clear to me.
    • Gibbon1 6y ago
      qt and wxwidgets are cross platform.
  • unnouinceput 6y ago
    You trade one set of problems (build native app) with another one (browser compatibility). There is no perfect solution when it comes to cross-platform.
    • schwartzworld 6y ago
      Browser compat is barely an issue today. Modern web development tools and more standardization mean you just have to test your code on a few browsers, but 99% of modern JS will run the same on Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari.
• cpach 6y ago
  Have you considered Qt? As a Mac user I prefer native applications if available. But still, I would consider a well-written Qt application. For example, qBittorrent is quite alright. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_(software) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_(software) https://www.qbittorrent.org/ https://www.qbittorrent.org/
  • anang 6y ago
    Are there any canonical resources for learning qt with common language bindings? I know pyqt exists, but there’s a lot of info out there and it’s hard to know what’s good and what’s not. I’ve also found that generally any guides are either kitchen sink level or not much more than hello world. Where should I look? I’m willing to put in the work!
    • otterlicious 6y ago
      I learned from this guide (well the PyQt4 version). It starts off small and works up to the kitchen sink if that's what you need: http://zetcode.com/gui/pyqt5/ http://zetcode.com/gui/pyqt5/ There are a few others here: https://wiki.python.org/moin/PyQt/Tutorials https://wiki.python.org/moin/PyQt/Tutorials The 2020 one there may be what you're looking for, more than hello world but doesn't quite all the way get to the kitchen sink, just maybe the silverware drawer.
    • d0mine 6y ago
      Beware of there may be Qt licensing issues.
      • formerly_proven 6y ago
        Not really. It's not 1997. Qt is LGPL. PySide is LGPL. PyQt is "GPL but allows you to link from popular open source licenses".
        • andi999 6y ago
          PyQt is "GPL but allows you to link from popular open source licenses" what is this supposed to mean?
• zelphirkalt 6y ago
  Racket has a cross platform GUI library. I've seen some tutorial some time ago, where someone used libwebkit from Rust, but I could not find it again recently, so the point is: There could be libraries allowing you to talk to a rendering engine and this could be a more mInimalistic approach than Electron.
  • evdubs 6y ago
    To add to this, OP, there is an interesting blog with many examples of graphics development in Racket: https://alex-hhh.github.io/ https://alex-hhh.github.io/ I have written a couple GUI applications in Racket; maybe they can serve as motivation to discover Racket's GUI capabilities: https://github.com/evdubs/chart-simulator https://github.com/evdubs/chart-simulator https://github.com/evdubs/renegade-way https://github.com/evdubs/renegade-way There are limitations to Racket's GUI toolkit compared to writing a native Qt/GTK/WPF/Cocoa application. You may find it easy to express simple/not-so-complex interfaces and then find it much more difficult to do other things. There's also the fact that Racket's real threads story isn't so great. If I needed to write a cross-platform GUI application for the masses, I'd probably pick JavaFX over Racket, but Racket has been very impressive if your initial impression is to not expect much.
• TurboHaskal 6y ago
  Racket and LispWorks ($). If you want a RAD IDE I recommend you to take a look at Lazarus and Xojo ($). You can try them all and think for yourself. Xojo and LispWorks in particular come with plenty of example apps.
• anang 6y ago
  Thanks for the responses! I’m sort of aware of specific products/projects for cross platform desktop app development, and it’s fairly easy to just google and get a lot of the same answers here. What I’m more looking for are specific resources on how to do it. Like say I choose qt, what then? How do I go from an idea to a cross platform app with a reasonable build pipeline and a clear method for installation?
  • Gibbon1 6y ago
    I don't have direct experience but I know that Codelite and Code::Blocks IDE's use qt and both run on Windows, Linux, and MacOS. You could look at how they do it. Both projects eat their own dogfood, so you can with a little work build and install them yourself. And I 99% certain codelite has a wizard that can create a basic qt or wxwidgets project. Also see Qt Creator.
    • VZ 6y ago
      Both Codelite and Code::Blocks are written using wxWidgets.
      • Gibbon1 6y ago
        You are correct.
  • eldelshell 6y ago
    It also depends on your ecosystem of choice. If you know Java then a single maven command will build you a full JavaFX application. If you're more comfortable with web, a single npm command will build an Electron app.
• miguelrochefort 6y ago
  Take a look at Uno https://platform.uno/ https://platform.uno/ It basically lets you compile WinUI (Windows 10, C#, XAML) apps to run natively on all platforms (Windows, MacOS, Linux, Web, iOS, Android). Disclaimer: I was part of that project for 3 years.
  • null_deref 6y ago
    How do you compare it to flutter?
  • jitl 6y ago
    Feels slow in the browser on my iPhone X
• libx 6y ago
  There's Tk (https://tkdocs.com https://tkdocs.com) with bindings to several languages. The simplest and the original one being TCL. What a great language to program in! Although I've not yet tried it myself, there's AndroWish (https://www.androwish.org/home/home https://www.androwish.org/home/home). Deploy your TCL/Tk code on Android with minimal changes.
  • endlessvoid94 6y ago
    I used the Tk ruby bindings several years ago and it was easy and looked decent.
• dekhn 6y ago
  qt
• lenkite 6y ago
  Google's flutter https://flutter.io/ https://flutter.io/ is the best at the moment - even if I dislike dartlang, I have to admit the product is amazing.
  • geoffpado 6y ago
    Note: OP is looking for solutions for the desktop, and the Flutter site[0] warns that desktop support is in an alpha state, with Windows still under development. [0]: https://flutter.dev/desktop https://flutter.dev/desktop
• raz32dust 6y ago
  You should give JavaFX a shot. It's not considered cool here, but does the job well IMO. I have built desktop apps that work seamlessly between MacOS, Windows and Linux using JavaFX with minimal pain. I was already quite familiar with Java and the Java way of doing things though. That probably helps.
  • Nextgrid 6y ago
    For the people having apprehension around Java’s performance, let me tell you that my 12-inch MacBook with a mobile CPU managed to run IntelliJ IDEA just fine (a heavy Java-based IDE) but significantly struggles with Microsoft Teams (Electron-based chat client).
    • TeMPOraL 6y ago
      Yeah. Java's default performance isn't bad, and the floor is quite good (lots of space to optimize if needed). Just avoid bloating it up with enterprise framework when you don't need them. JavaFX doesn't seem as snappy as native OS GUI frameworks, but I've found it very nice to develop for. It comes with reactive model out of the box, and there are some extra libraries that take it up to 11.
  • baglunch 6y ago
    I recently finished a project in JavaFX and am looking to build another application. I've been unsure of whether to continue using Java or use native widgets. I'm very comfortable with Java, but one of the issues I've had is the size of the resulting binary with the JRE included (it's possible to not include a JRE of course, but it's much easier to have it bundled from a user perspective). You can use jlink to reduce the size of the bundled JRE so that it only includes relevant modules, but does it actually reduce the binary size by a significant amount? Also, JavaFX doesn't seem to have backing from larger organizations like Electron does. Are there any well-known apps created with JavaFX. I know IntelliJ was created with Java but using Swing if I recall correctly.
    • brabel 6y ago
• cjbprime 6y ago
  The way I see it: if you had infinite time and money then you would build a native app for each platform you care about, and when you choose e.g. Electron instead you're making a tradeoff because of your available resources. When people criticize Electron, I don't think they're saying "given your capacity, you should have picked a different and better point on the tradeoff curve". I think they're just mad that you had the requirements you had and didn't get to apply more resources than you had access to. So, at first it sounds like they're making a technical argument against anyone who would choose to use Electron, but I think what they're actually doing is instead expressing some kind of economic disappointment in your situation. (I would probably use Electron on a small budget, Qt on a medium budget, and native apps on a large budget.)
  • dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
    > So, at first it sounds like they're making a technical argument against anyone who would choose to use Electron, but I think what they're actually doing is instead expressing some kind of economic disappointment in your situation. This is a fair assessment. Still, this disappoinment is worth expressing as it makes it clear the current situation (lack of high-quality, mature, cross-platform toolkit using native widgets) is frustrating. You shouldn't be choosing between spending a lot of resources doing things right and spending a reasonable amount producing an inneficient monster that drains your users' system resources.
    • TeMPOraL 6y ago
      That's the gist of it. However, I feel the assessment often flies in the face of Parkinson's law. Economics of software development are funny - particularly if software is a part of a bigger company, there's enough inefficiency in both software teams and the greater organization, that Electron vs. 3x native shell + shared core could not be a noticeable difference in terms overall resource expenditure. The particularly annoying part about economics here is the "limited oxygen" nature of software products. If you and I both develop a software tool, but I decide to rush it with Electron while you take it slow with native app per platform, I get to (assuming the tool is a-ok) "suck the oxygen out of the space" by releasing first, and you may lose the motivation/market to create the better tool. Which is to say, "good today" may be better than "perfect next week", but the big reason why software products suck so badly is that "shitty today" is considered better than "good tomorrow".
• devwastaken 6y ago
  Flutter looks nice, but it's dart. In a sane world we would already have webviews on all platforms and the problem mostly solved for client applications. But there's a lot of forces at work that want to artificially suppress web UI. Chromium doesn't have webview on desktop platforms, but Microsoft's chromium edge does. Apple puts in their special restrictions making up rules for any app that uses wkwebview. Nobody with the power wants to make webUI universally deployable. At the end of the day you choose one that you'll actually deploy something with. There's no more right or wrong in UI, it's can you get to the goal of deploying a functional app or not.
  • axegon_ 6y ago
    In all fairness I think Dart is Flutter's strength, not it's weakness. It is a very well thought out language, unlike javascript(in the spirit of discussing electron). There is undeniably a problem with flutter however: while it can be used for desktop applications, it's mobile-first, desktop-sec.. well... desktop-kinda-sorta-works...
    • moksly 6y ago
      I don’t mind dart, but typescript and electron have the full weight of Microsoft behind them while dart and flutter remain mostly hobby projects. We did the business case for cross platform, as we’re a non-tech enterprise organisation with 10.000 employees but few developers. We wanted flutter to win, but react native came out like the sound choice.
      • searchableguy 6y ago
        > while dart and flutter remain mostly hobby projects. What makes you think that? They have spent more than 3-4 years with millions of dollars on it.
      • axegon_ 6y ago
        You'd be surprised how many top-downloaded apps are made with flutter. Electron and typescrypt may have some potential but they have a horrible genetic desease - javascript. That alone makes flutter a clear winner.
• fito 6y ago
  wxWidgets, of course! There’s also these tiny but high-quality frameworks for C++: https://github.com/andlabs/libui https://github.com/andlabs/libui https://github.com/cycfi/elements https://github.com/cycfi/elements
• raitucarp 6y ago
  Maybe you interested combine QT with react? - https://docs.nodegui.org/ https://docs.nodegui.org/ - https://react.nodegui.org/ https://react.nodegui.org/
  • austinjp 6y ago
    Indeed. I'm currently experimenting with NodeGUI and React Native as a means to write React components shared by web, Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, Linux. Early days, but it broadly seems to work. I can even swap in Preact for web, RN for mobile, and NodeGUI for desktop builds with enough webpack config fiddling.
• gigel82 6y ago
  There's React Native for Windows and Mac now. Still pretty early on, but worth a shot especially if you're also targeting mobile platforms (you can share a lot of logic and some UI).
• cshenton 6y ago
  Left of field, but game engines have figured out translating a single set of UI APIs to multiple graphics backends already. Alternatively you could use a compatibility version of OpenGL, like 3.3 which will run on any desktop OS, then use a windowing lib like glfw and UI framework like Dear ImGui which is graphics API agnostic. I use this particular combination all the time and it never lets me down. Sokol is another options which is a very thin layer over many graphics APIs.
  • devxpy 6y ago
    I believe this is how flutter (and by extension, chrome) works as well
  • krapp 6y ago
    > Left of field, but game engines have figured out translating a single set of UI APIs to multiple graphics backends already. I can't speak for Unity, but as far as Godot is concerned, the workflow for certain things like layout and text styling leave a lot to be desired if you're not making games. Really, that just means waiting until more suitable plugins are available.
• ddek 6y ago
  Avalonia is a cross platform port of XAML, that is ready for app development. I’m waiting for it to move to .Net 5 though. There’s also FuncUI, an elm-like layer over Avalonia written in F#.
  • Nginx487 6y ago
    We develop on Avalonia, it provides very limited control set and functionality, and 3rd party libraries/controls do not exist yet. Cross-platform framework requires some time to become mature and create ecosystem around.
    • pknopf 6y ago
      Checkout https://GitHub.com/qmlnet/qmlnet https://GitHub.com/qmlnet/qmlnet It leverages the entire Qt system with the power of .NET. We use it on embedded medical devices.
      • Nginx487 6y ago
        And how's it on production? I remember, we considered it, and rejected because the framework visibly far from release. Maybe, we were wrong.
• betimsl 6y ago
  Maybe this: https://git.sr.ht/~eliasnaur/gio https://git.sr.ht/~eliasnaur/gio
• tus88 6y ago
  PyQT
• tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  Cross platform is always going to be a compromise. You will never achieve a fully native feel for each platform and in trying to do so will soak up a huge amount of time. So I'd start by asking yourself whether you really need your application to be cross platform.
  • JamesSwift 6y ago
    The question is not whether you want your application to be cross platform. After ~10 years of app development I can say that in almost every case I do want to share codebases. The real question is "where do you draw the line for cross platform code?". In other words, do you want everything to be potentially shared or do you only want the "business logic" to be shared? Unless theres a real constraint on time, I've found the best option to be starting with shared core + native views and migrating the view logic into the shared core over time as you discover the UI patterns. You can have native feel by using a framework that binds to the native directly. In my opinion Xamarin is the best option currently, but Kotlin Multiplatform is a possibility once they mature.
• Arathorn 6y ago
  We’re experimenting with using a rust core library (matrix-rust-sdk) for next gen Matrix clients for code reuse/maintainability/performance/safety, but then doing platform native UI on top for optimal UX (via swiftui, web, android, gtk, etc). It remains to be seem how well this will work :)
  • miki123211 6y ago
    Hey, are you absolutely set on GTK for non-linux systems? It has accessibility problems, excludinga certain group of users, including blind people. I'd urge you to reconsider.
    • cycloptic 6y ago
      Please file bugs in GTK for the accessibility issues you're having, there is interest in getting those fixed.
• modeless 6y ago
  An underused option is to include a local HTTP server in your native app and open it in the user's default browser. This avoids some of the resource consumption and security issues that make Electron bad, but still lets you integrate native code with a web UI. I wrote a little framework for this: https://github.com/jdarpinian/web-ui-skeleton https://github.com/jdarpinian/web-ui-skeleton
  • krapp 6y ago
    This is how Electron style apps should work, instead of wrapping an entire browser instance around each app to maintain the illusion of it not being at all web based.
    • wffurr 6y ago
      They are called PWAs
      • remram 6y ago
        PWA refers to the client-side app only. They are not related.
        • wffurr 6y ago
          How do you figure? You can locally host or package a PWA same as Electron. Chrome at least is closing the gap in capabilities too.
          • deleted 6y ago
            [deleted]
    • innocenat 6y ago
      No. I want to be able to Ctrl-S and it save the changes I made to the file (for example, but this is the most annoying thing for me) That doesn't work with actual browser.
• dastx 6y ago
  I see a lot of people suggesting Qt, is there a reason GTK isn't being suggested at all? I'm in a position where I'd like to develop a better client for Bitwarden that includes autofill to the point of 1Password, and while I did start with GTK (learning for the first time), seeing no one recommend GTK here (compared to multiple people recommending Qt) isn't filling me with confidence
  • captainmuon 6y ago
    I found GTK with Python really nice. With a bit of effort you were able to make it look native on all platforms. Clean API, visual Editor, and quite performant. Unfortunately the project suffers a bit from CADT (Google it) and the devs break backwards compatibly all the time. They seem no longer interested in providing compatibility across versions or for platforms other than GNOME unfortunately. With GTK 2, you could write an app with e.g. GTK 2.16 and it would still run with 2.32, but receive all new features from the toolkit. Now you are expected to constantly change your app with every release.
    • awalton 6y ago
      GTK+ 3 was a bit of a nightmare in this regard, but GTK+ 3 is also feature frozen and will be supported for more years to come, so a new application doesn't have as much to worry about here. The downside would be the desire to port to GTK+ 4 in some amount of time, which might require a large amount of effort depending on the application. On the other hand, if you're starting today you could also start with GTK+ 4...
      • captainmuon 6y ago
        That's half of my complaint, that the GTK+ devs consider "stable" to mean "frozen". You are supposed to code against the latest completed version (e.g. the final GTK+ 3), which will not receive compatible feature updates, and then if you want to get the new features you have to port your code to the next version. Whereas under the old model (GTK+ 2.x) it was forwards compatible (if that is the right word) - you code against a stable but actively developed version, and your code will work with no or minimal changes for multiple years, and you will receive the benefits of new versions (historical examples: changes to file open/save dialogs, theming changes, window resize grippers, dragging windows from menubars, ...).
• sxp 6y ago
  If you need a lightweight solution, Dear ImGui is a tiny cross platform GUI library: https://github.com/ocornut/imgui https://github.com/ocornut/imgui
  • formerly_proven 6y ago
    Dear ImGui is a great library, and immediate mode GUIs work really well for "data-centric applications" that don't want to replicate their primary data model in the terms of a UI framework. But for a standalone app you'll need much more. You probably need file dialogs, you might need working menus (ImGui can draw menus, but provides nothing in the way of keyboard shortcuts), you might need translations, you might need accessibility -- in terms of accessibility ImGui apps are literally just a framebuffer. Nothing, nada.
• munawwar 6y ago
  I've used python, pywebview and html/css on a (super) simple application recently. pywebview will use system installed web browser, rather than ship entire chromium. So maybe check that out.
  • unnouinceput 6y ago
    System installed web browser sounds like a common mistake. Easy to deploy and develop for it, hard to maintain. In the end you'll end-up with frustrated customers when it comes to security nightmare. Better ship that Chromium, it will save you a lot of negative karma.
• pansa2 6y ago
  I’d agree with the other comments that Qt seems to be the most popular option if you exclude web technologies. However I’m currently planning a project that has a game in a main window and separate debug windows. The main window will be OpenGL, but I don’t know whether there’s an advantage to using Qt for the debug windows, compared to using OpenGL throughout with Dear ImGui on top.
• miki123211 6y ago
  Whatever library you decide to use, you should definitely look at its accessibility. Even if you're not legally required to implement it now, and even if you don't think this is a basic human right (which you should), there are legal changes coming, and you never know when you will be forced to implement it. If you choose a library with great accessibility support, even though your app might not be accessible initially, fixing this won't be that hard. If you choose a library without one, though, when the time comes, you will either need to completely rewrite your app using a different library, or dig deep into native OS code and figure out how to interface with accessibility APIs, which is not an easy task. This is a risk/reward scenario. The downside of choosing a library that supports accessibility usually isn't that bad, putting personal feelings about Electron aside. However, if you need accessibility someday, however unlikely that might now seem, you really don't want to be forced to drop everything and focus on rewriting that GUI layer fast, before the regulators catch you. It seemed very unlikely that game developers would ever need accessibility, so no one cared. Then, the US government mandated that all chat systems must be accessible, and a lot of games include chat systems. That was not a pleasant experience for anyone. You never know what is coming, and you don't want to shoot yourself in the foot. Now for some pointers. Electron is fine. No, really, Electron, is, fine. There's nothing wrong with it. QT is fine too. GTK works, as long as all your users are on Linux, as accessibility for other platforms is nonexistent. Java works on Windows, not sure about Linux and Mac. Anything that uses native widgets, so WX and native OS frameworks are the best, but not everyone can afford the luxury of choosing those. Game frameworks and small, minimal libraries are a no go.
  • TheCapeGreek 6y ago
    Electron is fine on its own, sure. The main gripes I read with it are excessive RAM use because it's basically Chrome, and it piles up the more Electron apps we use day-to-day. Java on Linux/Mac is fine.
  • fileeditview 6y ago
    While I of course do not oppose accessibility or Electron per se I think this is bad advice. 0) All advice depends a lot on the product. Most general advice is just useless. 1) Preparing for potential changes in legislation is most of the time not a good idea. As you said you never know what is coming and so you should not try to prepare for everything. Also said games you mention could probably disable the chat if implementing accessibility features was to costly. Also these changes don't come over night. 2) I really dislike what people try to cramp into basic human rights.. Do you also expect this from open source software? Do you really think if people spend their free time they are obligated to implement accessibility or whatever else? In my opinion the user of open source is entitled too nothing. 3) Electron, is, not, fine, just, like, that. There are tons of Electron apps out there which have no right to carry hundreds of megabyte with them and consume that many resources. I am pro choosing whatever you want. But please don't advert Electron as "is-always-fine".. If you even want to force accessibility.. what about energy consumption?
• obarthelemy 6y ago
  Not a dev, just a user. I've got a 16GB, 7yo Core i5 desktop that was working fine for me. Then it started freezing up. Right after I installed the desktop Discord client. Yep, that thing can freeze it all for up to 2 mins. Also make it unusably jerky until it gets focus back. And lag so much when I type that I can't use cursor keys, only the mouse really. So I dug into what it's made of: Electron. Sp on behalf of all users: dev with whatever you want, just please not Electron.
  • azangru 6y ago
    Have you used VSCode or Atom at all?
    • Scapeghost 6y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13940014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13940014 "VS Code uses 13% CPU when idle due to blinking cursor rendering"
      • facorreia 6y ago
        And yet it has become extremely popular. It looks like the team made an excellent trade-off.
      • mceachen 6y ago
        ICYMI: This bug from 2017 was triaged, fixed and in the insider build in less than 2 weeks (!!) https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/22900 https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/22900
  • jankiehodgpodge 6y ago
    There are some good electron apps and some bad ones.
• jarek-foksa 6y ago
  I'm developing a cross-platform widget toolkit for Electron and Chromium-based browser called Xel [1]. The next major version of the toolkit (to be released later this year) is going to support dark mode and several new themes [2]. [1] https://xel-toolkit.org/ https://xel-toolkit.org/ [2] https://boxy-svg.com/ideas/90/preferences-theme-setting https://boxy-svg.com/ideas/90/preferences-theme-setting
  • 1_player 6y ago
    I really hate the fact that I can't even view your landing page on anything that's not running a Chromium engine. Even though the widget toolkit is designed to run on Electron, people still use Firefox to browse the internet.
  • sdfhbdf 6y ago
    Hmm, it's pretty concerning that Your cross-platform oriented landing page is not working for me in Safari.
  • formerly_proven 6y ago
    > To view this site, you must use Chrome, Opera or other Chromium-based browser. As the young people say: "lmao gtfo"
  • drran 6y ago
    Your "crossplatform" site doesn't work in Firefox. :-/
• IshKebab 6y ago
  You should definitely start with Qt and choose something different if you have a good reason to (e.g. really don't want to use C++ or Python).
• lap43 6y ago
  Sciter
• pjmlp 6y ago
  Common logic in a language like C or C++, and bindings to the native widgets.
  • layoutIfNeeded 6y ago
    The only sane answer.
  • anang 6y ago
    I think this is a really attractive answer, but I’ve never programmed in c or c++. I’m a little scared off by a lot of warning about how easy it is to write unsafe code. Are there any other cross platform languages with bindings to native GUI frameworks?
    • pjmlp 6y ago
      FreePascal comes to mind. And is also doable with Go, D, Rust, Java, .NET, just someone does need to write the FFI code.
• Const-me 6y ago
  If I were to start a new project today, I’d look at this library: https://platform.uno/ https://platform.uno/ Can’t say I like all technical decision they made. I would prefer them to use a purposely-built GPU-centric renderer instead of Skia, it’s not terribly complex, here’s a proof of concept: https://github.com/const-me/Vrmac/#2d-graphics https://github.com/const-me/Vrmac/#2d-graphics Still, Skia is not _that_ bad, maybe it’s fine there.
  • bscphil 6y ago
    An irritating thing about Uno is that I heard about it for the first time in this thread, and I'm finding it basically impossible to figure out how well it meets the requirement of this thread: cross-platform GUI. Their main page says that it's cross-platform, but doesn't have any screenshots of a simple application running on every platform. If you go to [1] you'll see that most of the programs they feature are Android + iOS only, not even desktop platforms. Of the few that do, most seem to be Windows only, and a few run on the Mac, but look horrific on that platform. [2] Not a single one of their showcase programs runs on Linux. What's up with this, shouldn't the whole point of a showcase for a cross-platform UI framework be to show off applications that run on every supported platform? If you start digging into the docs [3], you immediately find pages that mention only iOS, Android, UWP, and WebAssembly as supported platforms. The "developers" dropdown on the main page has Android, iOS, Web, macOS and Windows 7?? Even their code samples [4], hilariously, only run on a few platforms and don't seem to link to any actual code? [1] https://platform.uno/showcases/ https://platform.uno/showcases/ [2] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/uno-calculator/id1464736591 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/uno-calculator/id1464736591 [3] https://platform.uno/docs/articles/getting-started/requirements.html https://platform.uno/docs/articles/getting-started/requireme... [4] https://platform.uno/code-samples/ https://platform.uno/code-samples/
    • JamesSwift 6y ago
      I do a lot of app dev and recently looked into Uno to see what it was because I was also confused. Uno is sort of an alternative to Xamarin.Forms aimed at windows developers that aren't happy that Xamarin.Forms uses a non-standard XAML. Uno uses UWP XAML, which is preferred by these users. The way I like to think of the two frameworks is that Uno is a cross-platform framework that aims to align systems to the Windows way of doing things, while Xamarin.Forms is more of a "do iOS/Android" in same codebase and just happens to also support windows. There is unique value props in each framework (e.g. Uno also targets WASM and Xamarin.Forms targets Samsung Tizen). Here is a good high level of Uno: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyo2BI4rn0g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyo2BI4rn0g
• pkphilip 6y ago
  Please do test out FreePascal and the Lazarus IDE. Why? 1. Cross platform - Mac OS, Linux and Window and Raspberry Pi https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ 2. VERY fast development and compile-run cycles. You are talking about WYSIWYG designer and compilation in seconds. 3. Fully native binaries which are very small and very fast. 4. It is a full fledged RAD environment with full support for GUI development using a very powerful designer. 5. There are GUI as well as non-GUI components - example: Database components, Database-aware grids, database aware-listboxes, search filters etc. 6. Very diverse set of components. And very easy to develop new components from scratch or customise and existing component. 7. The object structure is very powerful - with support for read & write properties, composite components, property setting pages, internationalisation etc. 8. It is possible to interface with C/C++ libraries as well and that isn't complicated
  • evdubs 6y ago
    How does one usually go about finding documentation related to Pascal? Does one need to download a package from https://packages.lazarus-ide.org/ https://packages.lazarus-ide.org/ and view its documentation from there?
    • pkphilip 6y ago
      The Lazarus IDE has built-in help. Apart from that you can get component-specific documentation as well. Freepascal Runtime Library documentation: https://lazarus-ccr.sourceforge.io/docs/rtl/ https://lazarus-ccr.sourceforge.io/docs/rtl/ Lazarus Component Library: https://lazarus-ccr.sourceforge.io/docs/lcl/ https://lazarus-ccr.sourceforge.io/docs/lcl/ Freepascal Component Library: https://lazarus-ccr.sourceforge.io/docs/fcl/ https://lazarus-ccr.sourceforge.io/docs/fcl/ Freepascal Wiki: https://wiki.freepascal.org/Lazarus_Documentation https://wiki.freepascal.org/Lazarus_Documentation Something else I should have added in my original comment: Lazarus has a very capable built-in debugger. That is invaluable if you want to step through and understand how things work. EDIT: Other sites: Some demo projects here: https://www.getlazarus.org/ https://www.getlazarus.org/ Lazarus project showcase: https://www.getlazarus.org/community/showcase/ https://www.getlazarus.org/community/showcase/ The Transmission Bittorrent GUI client was done in Lazarus: https://sourceforge.net/projects/transgui/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/transgui/ Other apps done in Lazarus from the Lazarus website shown by category: https://wiki.freepascal.org/Projects_using_Lazarus https://wiki.freepascal.org/Projects_using_Lazarus
• acvny 6y ago
  Java swing or javafx
• sys_64738 6y ago
  I only want to run native apps where possible. I certainly refuse to use anything java based as I hate the whole eco-system due to how horrible and generic java apps look. I say that as a former java developer. I dislike Electron apps on the Mac as they’re just massive memory hogs. That’s probably a Mac issue given the whole macOS is bloated. But on Linux I don’t mind what I run, except java. Maybe it’s the red cloak that terrorizes that platform I dislike most.
  • aww_dang 6y ago
    Have you used SWT?
  • beagle3 6y ago
    I used to, but I don't have convenient sandboxing set up, and now I'm too scared of what the world has become to run native apps that don't come from a well-known-and-trustworthy distribution method -- whereas, I trust my browser enough to visit links I find or are recommended to me by people I know (though there's still a chance of zerodays, etc.) How do you keep your native apps well behaved?
  • aasasd 6y ago
    It's at least possible to do Java apps decently, as IntelliJ proves. Dunno about the effort involved.
    • scarface74 6y ago
      IntelliJ still has the same “Java stench” that GUI Java programs have had from the beginning. It just doesn’t feel right. I can’t put my finger on it.
      • potamic 6y ago
        It's the memory. Fresh launch of the empty IDE takes 1G.
  • billfruit 6y ago
    Modern JavaFX apps have a decent, almost native look so I think Java scene has improved in this regard in recent years.
• agarzenm 6y ago
  I like to keep things simple so Tkinter.
• aww_dang 6y ago
  It has been awhile, but I had good results with embedding the Avian JVM, removing all unused classes via proguard and using Eclipse SWT for native GUI widgets. In the end I was left with nice small self contained binaries.
• Jaruzel 6y ago
  I recently dipped my toe in cross platform desktop dev with C# via Visual Studio on Windows and then the Mono runtime on Linux. Mono renders the app UI really well, but it's not pixel accurate - in fact, I found all the widgets to be stretched horizontally by an extra 10%. To confirm it, I put a circular image on the form, compiled it, and ran it in Mono (Rasbian distro) and the circular image was rendered by Mono as a squished oval. Otherwise it's a fairly good solution.
• fxj 6y ago
  wxWidgets https://github.com/wxWidgets/wxWidgets https://github.com/wxWidgets/wxWidgets runs native on the following platforms: - wxGTK: The recommended port for Linux and other Unix variants, using GTK+ version 2.6 or higher. - wxMSW: The port for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows variants including Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8 and 10. - wxOSX/Cocoa: For delivering 32-bit and 64-bit Cocoa-based applications on macOS 10.7 and above. - wxQt: wxQt is a port of wxWidgets using Qt libraries. It requires Qt 5 or later. - wxX11: A port for Linux and Unix variants targetting X11 displays using a generic widget set. - wxMotif: A port for Linux and Unix variants using OpenMotif or Lesstif widget sets. Bindings are available for C++ and python Window Layout Using Sizers Device Contexts (along with pens, brushes and fonts) Comprehensive Event Handling System HTML Help Viewer Sound and Video Playback Unicode and Internationalization Support Document/View Architecture Printing Archiecture Sockets Multithreading File and Directory Manipulation Online and Context-Sensitive Help HTML Rendering Basic Containers Image Loading, Saving, Drawing and Manipulation Date-Time Library and Timers Error Handling Clipboard and Drag-and-Drop
  • leeman2016 6y ago
    I recently (5 months ago) went this way targeting Windows and Linux and was very satisfied in the end. I might add: - Very small executable (I shipped around 10 MB executable) - No dependencies - Handling HiDPI screens (4k+) was OK - Very fast (Opening felt like restoring a minimized application)
  • oneplane 6y ago
    Every time an application didn't say it was using WxWidgets and I download it by accident, it still goes directly to /dev/null. WxWidgets is no better than the other non-native GUI toolkits. It just looks, feels and acts like crap all the same. Great for development, bad for everything else.
• pbsurf 6y ago
  For my cross-platform app, I was originally using Qt for desktop platforms and Android. I was fairly happy with Qt on the desktop, but less so on Android, in part because I was using Qt Widgets - Qt Quick is the newer, preferred way to build GUIs in Qt, at least for mobile. Around 2016 I started looking into an iOS port - at the time, Qt for iOS was fairly immature and there was (is?) some uncertainty about licensing requirements for statically linking Qt on iOS. Having already spent more time than I wanted fighting various problems with Qt on Android, I decided to consider alternatives and ended up creating my own SVG-based GUI library that I now use across desktop and mobile: https://github.com/styluslabs/ugui https://github.com/styluslabs/ugui
  • vertex-four 6y ago
    Can a screenreader user use an app written with this library? That’s a major thing Qt and pretty much no other cross-platform UI system get right.
  • dazhbog 6y ago
    Can u tell us more about this lib or any write up? Seems really cool and a lean approach!!
• Foober223 6y ago
  > building quality For top tier heirloom quality, use the native GUI widgets of the platforms you are targeting. The rest written in portable C. If the app is literally just GUI widgets, then then the cross platform nature falls apart. But for something like a 3D video game where a window widget is just a little bootstrap to your game, it's nice.
• fmxexpress 6y ago
  Delphi's FireMonkey framework offers cross platform on Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, and Linux with a single codebase and single UI. It works similar to how Flutter works in that it uses DirectX, OpenGL, OpenGL ES, and Metal API to draw the native like controls. Plus offers access to some native controls (mixed together) On Linux it uses GTK+. There are thousands of hours of video tutorials on how to build cross platform apps with FireMonkey on YouTube. But really it is just all built into the IDE. Select the platform. Compile. A Linux machine and a macOS machine are required to compile for those platforms. Because it is an integrated IDE everyone is together so there is less tooling to fight to compile for all platforms. Plus Delphi has staying power and plenty of history (25 years) behind it just like Python and PHP (verses newer languages and frameworks which may not be around later). There are other libraries available for Delphi that let you build apps like Electron (webview based apps) or entirely using native controls on iOS using Storyboards if you prefer that way. If I can self promote for a second here are 100 cross platform sample apps built in Delphi: https://github.com/FMXExpress/Cross-Platform-Samples https://github.com/FMXExpress/Cross-Platform-Samples
  • capableweb 6y ago
    Sounds good but... Is this what's needed to use FireMonkey? https://www.embarcadero.com/products/rad-studio https://www.embarcadero.com/products/rad-studio Price seems to range from ~$2000 to ~$4500 to use it, which feels a bit steep.
    • fmxexpress 6y ago
      There is a free Community Edition. https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter/free-download https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter/free-dow...
    • unnouinceput 6y ago
      Yup. That is what is need it and for any meaningful work you kinda need to buy the priciest version, which is north of $5000. I use Delphi and this is the main reason why is not widespread.
    • 6y ago
• clartaq 6y ago
  Clojure is a very pleasant language to develop in. I have found it easier to develop a JavaFX-UI program in Clojure than in Java. If you want to go the route of running a server on the user's machine and serving it through the user's browser, ClojureScript and Reagent/Re-Frame are excellent choices. Re-Frame, https://github.com/Day8/re-frame https://github.com/Day8/re-frame, in particular has very nice documentation. Clojure lets you use anything in the Java universe while ClojureScript gives you access to all the JavaScript stuff, including Node. There is a lot of tutorial information for both languages.
  • frompdx 6y ago
    Recently I've been working with cljfx for developing a JavaFX app with clojure. cljfx does a great job of creating a re-frame like development experience for JavaFX.
  • eyelidlessness 6y ago
    Clojure is a fantastic language, as far as dynamically typed languages go. ClojureScript turned me off to both languages however. I routinely encountered scenarios where accidentally passing values of the wrong type to core standard lib functions produced wildly unexpected behavior that would take hours or even days to debug. Reporting these issues almost always resulted in “don’t do that WONTFIX”, and often very hostile responses if I pressed the issue or even offered to contribute a fix. Ultimately I decided I’d be more productive in a language that embraces correctness as a core feature. And ultimately that led me to take the great FP techniques and philosophy I learnt in clojure and apply them as idiomatically as I could in a statically types language. Now most of my work is in TypeScript, and while I miss a lot of what Clojure has to offer, I would never go back
    • slifin 6y ago
      ClojureScript has some oddities compared to Clojure but in my experience acts much nicer than plain JS Clj-kondo is good to detect unintended passing, in terms of correctness there are sometimes minor fixes but not at the expense of backwards compatibility which is taken very seriously in core In terms of doing idiomatic Clojure in Typescript, "good" Clojure is data driven Typescript is type driven Universal data primitives Vs label everything with types aren't terribly compatible
• INTPenis 6y ago
  This is 100% speculation; but I strongly believe in web based and I also understand that some apps require hw access web based apps can't provide. So imho I would compromise and make an app that bundles a web server. So you separate out the hw logic from the GUI with an internal API and then bundle a web server to host the apps web GUI, and have it talk directly to the HW using the apps internal API. That way you get the wide range of ecosystems available for building web based apps, while also talking directly to hw with your internal API components.
• goffi 6y ago
  If you're doing Python, you may have a look at Kivy, it's not native UI, but it's quite nice, and can be run on all major platforms. On Android it's not perfect though, as you have to deal with bigger starting time (Python interpreter needs to be launched), and there is an impact on performances. On desktop it's working really well (again, if you're OK with non native UI). The Kivy ecosystem offers many neat things like PyJNIus to access Java class (and thus Android API) from Python, or Plyer for high level cross platform access to features like notification, vibration or GPS. An other uncommon choice which can be interesting (and has been discussed recently here), is using Godot for UI.
• _pgmf 6y ago
  I love using tcl/tk and Python's tkinter module. The complaint that it looks old-fashioned is addressed partly by using ttk (themed tk) but also just about every aspect of the widgets can be styled using a simple xresources-style config. It's fast and lightweight, free forever, stable as hell, and there's lots of resources online.
• shimonamit 6y ago
  I was examining Zoom's bin directory looking for a cross-platform GUI library they might be using, and found a library called DirectUI, also duilib. DirectUI was originally developed by Bjarke Viksoe. Looks like this here: https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/372559/DirectUI https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/372559/DirectUI. Maybe someone else can add some insight?
  • aninteger 6y ago
    Maybe it uses this on Windows but on Linux it's definitely using Qt widgets/Qt Quick.
• fbelzile 6y ago
  If you require a UI that is pretty heavy, here is my pro* tip to save time when developing for both Windows and macOS. 1) Buy a basic HTML template online for your app's dashboard. 2) Don't use Electon. Your users WILL notice and complain about performance. Instead, use the native WebBrowser control in .NET for Windows and WebView using macOS to display your UI. Disable right clicking and highlighting using HTML/JS. To the user, it'll feel like any other native app. Add this meta tag to the HTML file to ensure the WebBrowser control knows to use new versions of IE to render the UI: <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> (and/or look up how to add the FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION registry key) 3) Use the built in script calling functions to transfer settings back and forth between the UI and main app in JSON. Do the back end stuff in native code. 4) You can then re-use most of the UI code you wrote to easily port over to macOS. Use the same functions and logic you wrote on Windows to make your Swift functions. * I've been making a living from building/maintaining my desktop application for about 5 years and had no regrets setting it up this way. I've also seen a number of other expensive, high-end, "professional" software using the FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION registry key trick. Good luck!
  • itwy 6y ago
    But you'll lose quite a few things offered by Electron, such as notifications, taskbar/menubar, FS access, etc.
    • ido 6y ago
      Most of the app will still be c++/c#/java/whatever & be able to do these, only the UI will be HTML/css/js via the OS's web view.
  • ffhhj 6y ago
    I also do this on my mobile apps given how difficult it's to work with Android layouts.
  • nepthar 6y ago
    Can you provide an example of an app that does this? I'm just curious to see how to looks.
• beamatronic 6y ago
  I’ve been looking for the best solution to this since the 1990s. The best solutions I’ve seen are commercial solutions ($$$) or Java (i.e. Eclipse) In the 1990s there used to be something called Visix Galaxy. The GUI builder was the best I’ve ever seen. It was amazing but cost $$$.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• UnnoTed 6y ago
  The stable options for native cross-platform GUI are: 1. Sciter - Languages: C++/Python/Go/Rust/Pascal (optional: HTML/CSS/tiscript) - Development time: fast - Resource usage: light (space and performance) - Visual customization: easy, doesn't use native widgets. 2. Qt - Languages: C++/Python (optional: CSS/JS/QML) - Development time: slow - Resource usage: quite heavy (space), but well performant - Visual customization: QtWidgets: hard, QML: easy, doesn't use native widgets. 3. WxWidgets - Languages: C++/Python - Development time: slow - Resource usage: light (space and performance) - Visual customization: hard, uses native widgets. 4. Lazarus - Languages: Pascal - Development time: slow - Resource usage: light (space and performance) - Visual customization: hard, uses native widgets. [1]: https://sciter.com/ https://sciter.com/ - https://quark.sciter.com/ https://quark.sciter.com/ [2]: https://www.qt.io/ https://www.qt.io/ [3]: https://www.wxwidgets.org/ https://www.wxwidgets.org/ [4]: https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ https://www.lazarus-ide.org/
  • zerr 6y ago
    Qt (Widgets as well as QML) doesn't use native controls and it is fairly easy to customize (even Widgets, lookup "stylesheet"). For wxWidgets, there is wxUniversal, which draws custom controls, thus easier to customize - not sure how well it is maintained though. I'd argue that dev time is quite fast for all - Qt, wxWidgets, Lazarus.
    • andi999 6y ago
      I dont know if Lazarus compiles as fast as Delphi, but I'd argue that dev time for Delphi is equal to compile time for Qt app.
  • pkphilip 6y ago
    I am not sure what you mean when you say that the development time on Lazarus is slow. I would actually say that it is perhaps the fastest in the list.
    • mamcx 6y ago
      True. Lazarus/Delphi are the "APEX predators" for UI building. Their only caveat is their lack of resources (Lazarus) and weird costly licensing (Delphi).
• JamesSwift 6y ago
  The "best" way to do it is like you said, "core logic in a cross platform language and native gui code". The general path is this: 1. design things using an MVVM pattern and share all your business logic 2. write all your native gui code manually as you tease out the patterns 3. over time, you can start moving the UI generation into the shared code by writing a custom DSL The problem with platforms like React.Native and Elecron is that they are based on having a JS runtime, which is a de-facto performance hit and forces an async communication flow to the "native" side (flutter also has this issue). Xamarin does not have that same restriction, and is my preferred framework for this. Xamarin.Native (aka Xamarin.iOS/Xamarin.Android aka Xamarin.Traditional aka Xamarin) has a very minimal performance overhead for what it gives you in terms of native bindings and a shared codebase. Xamarin.Forms is a higher level abstraction that sits on top of Xamarin.Native and lets you theoretically write 100% shared code (by essentially being a community developed UI DSL like I outline in step 3 above), but it is buggy and has much worse performance. The hardest problems you will have to solve using this approach are navigation and lifecycle. For the most part these are well understood issues and you will find lots of postings with different strategies on how to approach them.
  • jamil7 6y ago
    This was my approach most recently although I swapped out MVVM for a Redux / Elm style shared architecture and wrote platform specific views.
• odshoifsdhfs 6y ago
  It really depends on the type of application. A Drawing application, where the 'core' is the drawing/filter/etc code, should probably be done in a shared library (C/C++/Rust?) and then have a native UI as the UI won't be the complicated thing. A Video editing app (where the UI for timelines, etc etc) where the UI is quite important, should probably be a mix where generic stuff (menus, buttons) use the native libs, but then have most of their controls rendered independently of the native UI lib (timeline, custom controls, etc). A audio mixer where the UI is mostly all custom, you can even do it in Unity (or Gogot/OpenGL/whatever) as 95% of it will be custom. A 'show data' ui filled with tables and lists and the likes, while I don't like, probably something like Electron would work. Or QT/wxWidgets A game pretty much doesn't matter and use a game engine that is supported in all platforms. I would recommend to use something like QT/wxWidgets/Xamarin Forms/etc as a generic take all, and depending on the app, adapt it to your needs.
• gravypod 6y ago
  I've been looking to build a UI recently too. I want to rewrite BloomRPC to be reflection-only and native. Something I've been struggling with is choosing a UI platform with a drag-and-drop editor for most UI frameworks. This available in Lazarus and Visual Studios but that's about it. Nothing works well in the Java/C/Python space with a visual editor. Why is that? Do people not find visual editors useful?
  • innocenat 6y ago
    IntelliJ has GUI builder. I believe Eclipse has it too, but I last use Eclipse more than 8 years ago.
    • brabel 6y ago
      IntelliJ only embeds JavaFX's Scene Builder[1] which can also be used stand-alone. [1] https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/javase/javafxscenebuilder-info.html https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/javase/javafxsceneb...
      • innocenat 6y ago
        I never knew that, but I have used their Swing GUI tool before: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/gui-designer-basics.html https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/gui-designer-basics.html
• dsincl12 6y ago
  I searched but couldn't see that anyone had suggested Revery[1] by Outrun Labs. Fast, native, cross-platform UI. They are using it to build Onivim 2[2] so they are _very_ committed to making improvements. [1] https://www.outrunlabs.com/revery/ https://www.outrunlabs.com/revery/ [2] https://onivim.github.io/ https://onivim.github.io/
• sidcool 6y ago
  I have heard some good things about JavaFX. Worth a spike.
• tuckerpo 6y ago
  wxWidgets is a lot less scuffed now than it used to be.
• madhadron 6y ago
  I've been trying to figure this out as well. The simple answer is that there is no consensus and no obviously right solution. My constraints were: - I'm not starting a desktop application project in C++ today. - I don't want to do the heavy lifting for complicated widgets myself. - I want to have the performance of compiled code without concurrency limitations (so no Python or Ruby). - I want at least a reasonable facsimile of native look'n'feel on the three major desktop platforms. - I want accessibility as at least an option. If I don't want to buy dev tools like LispWorks or Delphi, then I'm left looking at Java + Swing or a backend in Java or .NET and a web frontend. Then I look at Dolphin Smalltalk or Corman Lisp which are now open source on Windows, and they're phenomenal development environments that target Win32 directly instead of the layers added above it. macOS has excellent dev tools for just macOS. On Linux, GNOME and KDE both provide excellent environments. And I wonder if I should just forget about it and pick a platform.
  • klerpi 6y ago
    Which one would you pick if you had to?
• grblovrflowerrr 6y ago
  Revery is a compelling option, being used to build a commercial text editor: https://github.com/revery-ui/revery https://github.com/revery-ui/revery
• antihero 6y ago
  Has anyone used Proton-Native or the Microsoft React Native? Are they any good? That would be my first thing to look at.
  • scarlac 6y ago
    Yes, I have. "Microsoft React Native" aka React Native for Windows is not that great for the public yet. There are basic layout bugs that need to be addressed before it's good enough that I'd recommend it. But if you are feeling experimental, you would eventually get good iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS support all in 1 app.
• xgenecloud 6y ago
  In last few months, we built[1] a cross platform GUI app that generates automatic APIs over any SQL database. Here are our key learnings : * Building desktop apps is made up of an ecosystem which has sub optimal tools and it is very likely that it will never get better. On one end there is Electron which makes it easy to build but then if its a trivial app and your users are not likely to 've faster machines - your users are likely to suffer. Chrome the culprit is pretty much a joke. And on the other end there is QT, GTK which are awful to say the least. * More than building, it is the publishing these apps that is painful which gets rarely discussed here. It costs you both time and money. By time, on how bureaucratic the process is involved in procuring the SSL from a licensed vendor, its verification and so on. And money to get the code signing licenses which are separate for both MAC and windows. And good luck publishing them without code signing - apss will be treated like malware by OS. However popular apps still go ahead and do this (notepad++ etc) I would say use electron if you do not have sufficient resources to build natively for every OS. With some webpack optimizations you can squeeze in the app size to less than 300 MB but many electron apps without these optimizations go upto 650+ MB. Or else build it for MAC/Windows - release and see your adoption and take the next step. [1] : https://github.com/xgenecloud/xgenecloud https://github.com/xgenecloud/xgenecloud
• rscho 6y ago
  Smalltalk is stellar for precisely that. If you want all the bells and whistles, go for Pharo. If you are planning for something functional but simple, cuis smalltalk is the way to go.
• knotz 6y ago
  Purebasic. Cross platform (Windows, Mac, Linux), native widgets. Not fancy but gets the job done and is reliable.
• 9214 6y ago
  For moderately small apps, Red language offers a cross-platform (Win32, Cocoa and GTK) graphical engine with an embedded DSL for declarative GUI specification. As a baseline comparison, 7GUIs task implemented with it clock under 300 LOC. https://www.red-lang.org/2016/03/060-red-gui-system.html https://www.red-lang.org/2016/03/060-red-gui-system.html https://eugenkiss.github.io/7guis/ https://eugenkiss.github.io/7guis/ https://github.com/9214/7guis-red https://github.com/9214/7guis-red
• rock_artist 6y ago
  One factor not asked is pricing... This might apply to some frameworks. There are 3 general approaches: * Web technologies (Electron or any WebView) * Wrappers (eg. react-native, Xamarin) * Using a cross platform framework with some UI code (or additional UI renderer). (eg. cpp: QT, JUCE; java: swing or the newer ui toolkits). In terms of performance, The major question is the impact of the UI. Are you in need for video? do you need super-awesome FPS with custom GPU shaders? If you need super-fine control on the entire UI, meaning, the app IS the UI :) (or at least it's a major part of it) - then writing close to metal (OpenGL --> Vulkan/Metal) might be the best starting point. If your app can also run in a web-browser without compromises then starting a web-based development would be best. TL;DR - I feel that there's need to scope the UI needs to decide which is best.
• adamnemecek 6y ago
  I'm in the same sitch. Right now I'm working on building my own UI toolkit, it's annoying that I have to do it, but I like the control. I'm using Rust with https://github.com/cytecbg/gpucanvas https://github.com/cytecbg/gpucanvas for rendering and I'm porting parts and pieces of nanogui https://github.com/wjakob/nanogui https://github.com/wjakob/nanogui.
• edfletcher_t137 6y ago
  There are a few comments advocating Godot as a solution here and while it is indeed promising, its domain-specific nature hampers it for general application development in certain key ways, namely terrible host-filesystem support. Investigate it deeply before committing to avoid painting yourself into a corner later on.
• m_sahaf 6y ago
  If you're comfortable with the web stack and still want to stay lightweight, you can look into webview library[0]. I've used it with Go, and it also has bindings for other languages. It loads the platform's native browser with chroma-less window, just like an Electron app except perhaps lighter. Another option is to look into Flutter. There are many available iterations for desktop applications, one of them is the go-flutter[1]. [0] https://github.com/webview https://github.com/webview [1] https://github.com/go-flutter-desktop/go-flutter https://github.com/go-flutter-desktop/go-flutter
• cushychicken 6y ago
  For light, simple GUIs, I've been using python's PySimpleGUI package. Actively developed and supported, and easy to work with. Needs a target machine to build the output executables, but other than that, it's great!
• arkanciscan 6y ago
  Web.
• lukevp 6y ago
  People dislike electron because they are using apps where it is not implemented well. Javascript is single threaded and blocks rendering when it’s executing, just like most major UI frameworks. You have to run everything outside the main UI thread and marshal data back to the renderer. In JS the furthest most go is using promises with async/await, which lets you not block during a long-running request, but the continuation callback is still executing within the same thread. If you implemented an app using a web worker internally and kept the main thread just dispatching events and doing quick render updates, it would perform amazingly well. CSS and JS are crazy efficient, there is no reason that an electron app can’t refresh at 144hz. The limitations are purely architectural. Most other UI frameworks put all deferred callbacks into a separate execution context and force martialing (eg in WPF, having to use dispatcher.BeginInvoke). JS doesn’t force this but is possible. The ram usage is going to be higher than a native app, and so is the exe size. Those issues can’t be comparable. but the performance of the electron itself is not so poor as people believe. And a well written electron app can easily use under 200mb of ram, which is not an outrageous amount on modern systems.
  • valuearb 6y ago
    Web based user interface is always compromised over native UI, Electron is just a little less compromised.
• ryandrake 6y ago
  Here's an alternative to the various toolkits and HTML hacks people are posting: How to do a cross platform GUI? DON'T. As a user I expect applications to stylistically conform well to the native UI rules. I want a Mac application to look and feel like a Mac application, and an Android app to look and feel like an Android app. When an application uses one of these "cross-platform toolkits" I can tell instantly by using the application for a few seconds. Odd things around scrolling, menus, mouse hovering, how things re-draw when you resize the window, etc. They make your toolkit-built app stick out like a sore thumb. Yuck! Some toolkits are better than others, but I'm pretty sure I can always tell! Sacrifice a little to do your users a favor: Build all the business logic cross-platform, with an API layer callable by whatever the best native language is, and do the UI portions of your application with the platform-recommended native tools.
• jesperlang 6y ago
  I just recently discovered https://github.com/tauri-apps/tauri https://github.com/tauri-apps/tauri It looks like a good alternative to Electron but haven't tried. Anyone?
• rattray 6y ago
  There's a lot of discussion here about ways to use web technologies for performant desktop applications. A PWA that opens as its own Chrome "window", but shares resources, and runs any non-ui code in a web worker or localhost server, might make sense. But I don't know how to have a nice "install" experience that doesn't make it feel like a second-class-citizen Chrome app. Is there a way for a desktop installer to install a chrome app, such that to a typical user it just feels like Any Other Desktop App?
• rattray 6y ago
  I haven't seen React Native for Windows and MacOS mentioned much - https://microsoft.github.io/react-native-windows/ https://microsoft.github.io/react-native-windows/ Have folks used it? Is it any good?
• rattray 6y ago
  Proton Native claims to be working on a wxWidgets-based native component backend for its React-syntax desktop engine: https://proton-native.js.org/#/?id=native-components https://proton-native.js.org/#/?id=native-components Sounds exciting, no idea how far along it is. Hadn't heard of it until today.
• zelly 6y ago
  Chromium is the best UI toolkit ever created. What exactly are the arguments against Electron? It's slow to render? Wrong, Electron (Chromium) renders faster than Qt. The Skia engine is optimized to an extent that these other toolkits cannot compete with. It even has a Vulkan backend now. Single threaded? The render process is--you can use any native multithreaded code you want in another process. Memory? It's 70MB. That's nothing nowadays. Modern OSes can page it in and out when the application is idling. A lot of these other toolkits are quite heavy too, especially JavaFX in my experience. Also what happens when you need a webview in one of these other toolkits? In Qt you get an embedded instance of Chromium[1] so not only do you have the 70MB of Chromium, you also have the Qt runtime (!). The reason the Electron app you're using is slow or hogs giants amount of memory is the Javascript code itself is slow. Yes, Slack is a slow monster, but it's a giant codebase that does things that would be simply impossible in Qt, GTK, Swing and others. There's a reason we never saw these types of apps when the only frameworks were Qt and others. [1] https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtwebengine-overview.html https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtwebengine-overview.html
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • roel_v 6y ago
    "but it's a giant codebase that does things that would be simply impossible in Qt, GTK, Swing and others. " Like what?
    • zelly 6y ago
      Dynamic, server-side rendered views HTML snippets rendered for free (no need for an external HTML renderer) Lots of little things like <video> being enough to embed a video into the view versus subclassing a C++ Qt class or whatever song and dance it is in other frameworks. It's productivity that's the killer feature. You can theoretically do everything Electron does in Java Swing, but it would require reimplementing most of the web platform.
      • roel_v 6y ago
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• darkhorn 6y ago
  You can use ExtJS. Works in all modern browsers, both on desktop and smart phones.
• TeeWEE 6y ago
  For the platforms web, iOS and Android flutter is a clear winner.
• danap 6y ago
  For a native application for the desktop Java fits the need for cross platform. Yea its GUI is rather plain, but it has all the components required. I have a Java application that was built in 1999, still works on Mac, Linux, and Windows. I have built some JavaFX apps, but they have had problems rendering on some machines, so I have abandon that avenue. Besides it appears to be designed for the web, and was just a pain for layouts. For years I have been working a Java framework that allows for quick building of basic applications. The framework comes with database access, SQLite included, and a deployments and what is now called package management. lindyFrame http://dandymadeproductions.com/projects/lindyFrame/lindyFrame.html http://dandymadeproductions.com/projects/lindyFrame/lindyFra... https://github.com/danap/lindyframe https://github.com/danap/lindyframe
• pengo 6y ago
  Yes, you can create great interfaces using embedded browser panes; check out the Forex Smart Tools suite for some I've helped author. But don't discount a solution like Lazarus: sure, Object Pascal is old school now, but it's easy to create fully native applications that can be cross-compiled for Linux, MacOS and Windows.
• musicale 6y ago
  > core logic in a cross platform language and native gui code This produces a superior (often vastly superior) result, and it's also very hard and time-consuming. As an example: for Apple platforms only, SwiftUI can enable you to write a high-quality macOS/iOS/iPadOS app, but the devil is in the platform-specific details and exceptions to the generic behavior. Even Apple doesn't do a great job with some of its own cross-platform apps, and that should tell you that it isn't easy and doesn't come for free. Now consider the effort to get that level of performance, usability, and platform integration in a "non-native" framework that also targets Linux/Windows/Android/etc..
• tawayfree 6y ago
  Flutter will die, Kotlin native with compose is the future.
• philix001 6y ago
  You might want to follow the Rust developments in this area: https://areweguiyet.com/ https://areweguiyet.com/
• BuckRogers 6y ago
  Crossplatform will never be "right", always a compromise. I'd consider if you truly need to be crossplatform or not. If I need it, I'd go with a webapp, preferably Blazor for wasm. For native, I'd want to use one of my preferred platforms. Windows10 for desktop, iOS for mobile. I'd work my way down, starting with what I'd prefer to work with most. 1. Blazor WebAssembly (webapp) 2. Blazor Server (webapp) 4. WinUI/UWP (native) 3. ASP.NET MVC (webapp) 5. iOS (native)
  • BuckRogers 6y ago
    My post is referring to today. It's worth adding that for the future, .NET MAUI[0] may be what people are looking for. It's an evolution and expansion of Xamarin.Forms. I'd have a hard time believing you will be able to do better for a native, crossplatform GUI than .NET MAUI when it's ready. [0]https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/introducing-net-multi-platform-app-ui/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/introducing-net-multi-...
• tuananh 6y ago
  for cross-platform apps, from my own experience, I find Qt often deliver the highest quality.
• AtlasBarfed 6y ago
  It's been a while since I did any UI dev, and this thread has been very informative, thanks to everyone giving advice. But man, the balkanization of OS GUIs and widgets should have been subjected to the same very public shame that IE6 was subjected to, and a standards body. No wonder electron is so appealing. There is no technical excuse for modern OS's to have converged on a very well designed crossplatform UI toolkit. It really does underlie so much of why people are fleeing desktop OSs for phones and tablets. Does Microsoft Office still bake their entire own Windows UI/Widget stack?
• axilmar 6y ago
  Qt is by far the best choice for me.
• clartaq 6y ago
  There have been lots of good suggestions here, but I haven't seen any discussion of using an IDE platform. For example, [NetBeans platform](https://netbeans.org/features/platform/ https://netbeans.org/features/platform/) provides a very high quality platform to build Swing-based applications on top of. [Eclipse](https://projects.eclipse.org/projects/eclipse.platform https://projects.eclipse.org/projects/eclipse.platform) offers something similar. Both of those use Java. If you would prefer something more "lispy", you can do just about anything on top of [Emacs](https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/) (with the possible exception of making it pretty.) Depending on your application and familiarity with the IDE, using the base under one of these (or other) IDEs could save you tons of time.
• zubairq 6y ago
  You could also try appshare.co. Free , open source and cross platform