5 ms·

Appify-UI - Create the simplest possible Mac OS X apps, using HTML5 for the UI

93 points by dwynings 15y ago

thedangler 15y ago
Demo, Tutorials, Documentation?
randall 15y ago
Awesome. I was just thinking I needed this for a new project. Assuming it's Webkit under the hood... right? IE Safari-ish.
danishkhan 15y ago
This is really cool. I've been wanting to mess around with HTML5 for a mac app
jjcm 15y ago
Are there screenshots that are readily available?
- barredo 15y ago
  Here you go http://cl.ly/0c1D0g06133B0V3n1u1z http://cl.ly/0c1D0g06133B0V3n1u1z
catshirt 15y ago
how does this compare to Titanium? [1] i'd research myself, but there's not much to look at. [1] http://www.appcelerator.com/products/titanium-desktop-application-development/ http://www.appcelerator.com/products/titanium-desktop-applic...
wavephorm 15y ago
I feel this, like PhoneGap, this is a tremendous regression in web development. Just build web apps, stop with all this native/web hybrid nonsense.
- catshirt 15y ago
  what if you want to be listed in the app store?
- ceejayoz 15y ago
  It's a direct response to the failure of browsers to include API hooks into what has become basic and essential device functionality - camera access, for example.
dylanpyle 15y ago
Having worked extensively on a project that used something similar (we switched from Titanium Desktop to Mozilla's Chromeless project over the course of the dev cycle) as an underlying technology, I see a few things this needs to address. There IS a valuable niche here - Chromeless and Titanium are the only real competitors - and neither are solving it particularly well (though both slightly nicer than Appify as it currently stands). First: Lower-level APIs. That means I need Javascript hooks into file access, menu bar content, cross-domain requests, camera and microphone, etc etc etc. Without this, no meaningful apps can be created. Second: Config. Let me specify the startup window parameters (perhaps using a config JSON file included with the app source). Height, width, and position at least. Maybe support for multiple windows? Third: Support. This one is where Titanium and Chromeless both fall flat on their face. Titanium Desktop is dead; the company has shifted 100% of efforts into an equivalent platform for mobile devices. Things are broken and aren't getting fixed, which makes it unfeasible to use for long-term development. The same applies to Chromeless; I've submitted dealbreaking bugs to the github - things simply Don't Work - and receieved no developer response whatsoever. Again, it seems as if the dev team has lost interest. I really hope that you're planning on pursuing this as more than a one-off github project, because you have the opportunity to dominate an area of the "app development for web developers" market that NOBODY is currently solving. Best of luck. * EDIT: And for all of those who (largely correctly) will claim "desktop is dead, stop pretending it's the web" - you're right. The thing is, the project I was working on found ourselves in an interesting position, and we certainly weren't the only ones. We wanted to build a web app, and knew that the web was the future of our product. However, there was functionality we needed (filesystem access, non-flash microphone access, etc etc) that simply doesn't exist (yet!) on the web. Specifications and standards have been proposed and are being implemented, but we unfortunately can't assume that every potential user has a Chrome nightly build. Distributing an app running in an invisible web environment allowed us to develop the code we would be able to use long-term, while giving us a predictable, highly up-to-date, and extensible (via native hooks thru javascript) access to the local machine. Also: cocui looks awesome, and worth checking out. My team has since decided to accept our limitations and move to strictly web, but if I was considering a similar project again I would definitely consider it.
- kristiandupont 15y ago
ThomasAylott 15y ago
If you want features, be sure to check out https://github.com/rsms/cocui https://github.com/rsms/cocui I made this thing to add a quick UI to some shell scripts. This is not intended to be a serious project for desktop app development. Just a utility for nerds.
- shawnjan8 15y ago
  Funny, I was just going to learn Cocoa so I could do just this. I will try this out once finals are over :)
sleepyhead 15y ago
From the readme: "Similar Projects https://github.com/rsms/cocui https://github.com/rsms/cocui is probly better in every imaginable way."
mambodog 15y ago
If you are building desktop apps with web app technologies, you are really making compromises on a lot of important areas (native UI, responsiveness, runtime footprint, respecting platform conventions[1]). I can understand forgoing all of that, if doing so at least buys you broad cross-platform support. However in the case of platform-specific projects such as this, you're not even getting that. [1] http://readthefuckinghig.tumblr.com/ http://readthefuckinghig.tumblr.com/

93 points by dwynings 15y ago

Demo, Tutorials, Documentation?

Awesome. I was just thinking I needed this for a new project. Assuming it's Webkit under the hood... right? IE Safari-ish.

danishkhan 15y ago

This is really cool. I've been wanting to mess around with HTML5 for a mac app

jjcm 15y ago

Are there screenshots that are readily available?

barredo 15y ago
Here you go http://cl.ly/0c1D0g06133B0V3n1u1z http://cl.ly/0c1D0g06133B0V3n1u1z

catshirt 15y ago

how does this compare to Titanium? [1] i'd research myself, but there's not much to look at. [1] http://www.appcelerator.com/products/titanium-desktop-application-development/ http://www.appcelerator.com/products/titanium-desktop-applic...

wavephorm 15y ago

I feel this, like PhoneGap, this is a tremendous regression in web development. Just build web apps, stop with all this native/web hybrid nonsense.

catshirt 15y ago
what if you want to be listed in the app store?
ceejayoz 15y ago
It's a direct response to the failure of browsers to include API hooks into what has become basic and essential device functionality - camera access, for example.

dylanpyle 15y ago

Having worked extensively on a project that used something similar (we switched from Titanium Desktop to Mozilla's Chromeless project over the course of the dev cycle) as an underlying technology, I see a few things this needs to address. There IS a valuable niche here - Chromeless and Titanium are the only real competitors - and neither are solving it particularly well (though both slightly nicer than Appify as it currently stands). First: Lower-level APIs. That means I need Javascript hooks into file access, menu bar content, cross-domain requests, camera and microphone, etc etc etc. Without this, no meaningful apps can be created. Second: Config. Let me specify the startup window parameters (perhaps using a config JSON file included with the app source). Height, width, and position at least. Maybe support for multiple windows? Third: Support. This one is where Titanium and Chromeless both fall flat on their face. Titanium Desktop is dead; the company has shifted 100% of efforts into an equivalent platform for mobile devices. Things are broken and aren't getting fixed, which makes it unfeasible to use for long-term development. The same applies to Chromeless; I've submitted dealbreaking bugs to the github - things simply Don't Work - and receieved no developer response whatsoever. Again, it seems as if the dev team has lost interest. I really hope that you're planning on pursuing this as more than a one-off github project, because you have the opportunity to dominate an area of the "app development for web developers" market that NOBODY is currently solving. Best of luck. * EDIT: And for all of those who (largely correctly) will claim "desktop is dead, stop pretending it's the web" - you're right. The thing is, the project I was working on found ourselves in an interesting position, and we certainly weren't the only ones. We wanted to build a web app, and knew that the web was the future of our product. However, there was functionality we needed (filesystem access, non-flash microphone access, etc etc) that simply doesn't exist (yet!) on the web. Specifications and standards have been proposed and are being implemented, but we unfortunately can't assume that every potential user has a Chrome nightly build. Distributing an app running in an invisible web environment allowed us to develop the code we would be able to use long-term, while giving us a predictable, highly up-to-date, and extensible (via native hooks thru javascript) access to the local machine. Also: cocui looks awesome, and worth checking out. My team has since decided to accept our limitations and move to strictly web, but if I was considering a similar project again I would definitely consider it.

kristiandupont 15y ago

ThomasAylott 15y ago

If you want features, be sure to check out https://github.com/rsms/cocui https://github.com/rsms/cocui I made this thing to add a quick UI to some shell scripts. This is not intended to be a serious project for desktop app development. Just a utility for nerds.

shawnjan8 15y ago
Funny, I was just going to learn Cocoa so I could do just this. I will try this out once finals are over :)

sleepyhead 15y ago

From the readme: "Similar Projects https://github.com/rsms/cocui https://github.com/rsms/cocui is probly better in every imaginable way."

mambodog 15y ago

If you are building desktop apps with web app technologies, you are really making compromises on a lot of important areas (native UI, responsiveness, runtime footprint, respecting platform conventions[1]). I can understand forgoing all of that, if doing so at least buys you broad cross-platform support. However in the case of platform-specific projects such as this, you're not even getting that. [1] http://readthefuckinghig.tumblr.com/ http://readthefuckinghig.tumblr.com/