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It’s a tough problem and the fact that in 2023 there is no defacto solutions is a good indicator. Certainly there are contenders and they’ll be commented here.

It’s a tough problem and the fact that in 2023 there is no defacto solutions is a good indicator. Certainly there are contenders and they’ll be commented here. In my experience selling a cross platform shareware app around 2010 (when that was still a thing) the best practice if you wanted a consistent user experience was to use the platform native framework and make the application code as modular and independent as possible. My sense is that is mostly the same today.

EntrePrescott 4y ago
I don't even require "native" in the sense of a look and feel identical to that of the platform-specific GUI framework provided by the vendor of that platform… that would indeed be an additional layer of difficulty for a cross platform framework… and the degree to which the different cross-platform toolkits with an own rendering manage to mimick it is quite variable. But I don't even need that. I'm fine with the widgets/UIs of my applications having their own styling that, while (apart from my own special widgets) staying close enough to be understandable by everyone, don't totally closely match the exact current style / "look&feel" of the apps of the platform vendors. What I did mean with "native" in my last comment was simpler than that: I just meant "native" as in: not a web app or similar detached via abstraction layers and bundled with a browser that interprets it, but a natively compiled app that is directly linked to the rendering GUI lib. That would even be enough for me. But even for that, I find there isn't a satisfying cross-platform solution.
- c-smile 4y ago
  > but a natively compiled app that is directly linked to the rendering GUI lib. That's Sciter. It is a standalone embeddable library that does not use browser engine. It has its own HTML/CSS rendering engine that draws stuff using DirectX, Vulkan (Win/Lin) and Metal(MacOS). It is used in many (~500 mln installations) applications that are considered native. Like Norton and other antiviruses (https://sciter.com/#customers https://sciter.com/#customers)

EntrePrescott 4y ago

I don't even require "native" in the sense of a look and feel identical to that of the platform-specific GUI framework provided by the vendor of that platform… that would indeed be an additional layer of difficulty for a cross platform framework… and the degree to which the different cross-platform toolkits with an own rendering manage to mimick it is quite variable. But I don't even need that. I'm fine with the widgets/UIs of my applications having their own styling that, while (apart from my own special widgets) staying close enough to be understandable by everyone, don't totally closely match the exact current style / "look&feel" of the apps of the platform vendors. What I did mean with "native" in my last comment was simpler than that: I just meant "native" as in: not a web app or similar detached via abstraction layers and bundled with a browser that interprets it, but a natively compiled app that is directly linked to the rendering GUI lib. That would even be enough for me. But even for that, I find there isn't a satisfying cross-platform solution.

c-smile 4y ago
> but a natively compiled app that is directly linked to the rendering GUI lib. That's Sciter. It is a standalone embeddable library that does not use browser engine. It has its own HTML/CSS rendering engine that draws stuff using DirectX, Vulkan (Win/Lin) and Metal(MacOS). It is used in many (~500 mln installations) applications that are considered native. Like Norton and other antiviruses (https://sciter.com/#customers https://sciter.com/#customers)