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The web browser is a native cross-platform GUI framework that works everywhere -- including on the web. It's the best and most used cross-platform GUI framewor

The web browser is a native cross-platform GUI framework that works everywhere -- including on the web. It's the best and most used cross-platform GUI framework that has ever existed. Why should Microsoft roll their own solution? Nobody has ever been able to make this work outside of the web browser.

LorenDB 3y ago
Wrong - I can use Qt and QML to make an app that compiles and runs, unmodified, on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, and others. It can even run on web with WASM. And I wouldn't call web apps "native" or "the best".
- wvenable 3y ago
  Developers want to take their web applications and turn them into desktop applications, not the other way around. The web is the master platform. Qt has had decades to win over this space and failed. Github slapped Chromium together with Nodejs and took over the entire market of cross platform GUI development overnight. I might not like it but I understand it completely.
- tredre3 3y ago
  > I can use Qt and QML to make an app that compiles and runs, unmodified, on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, and others. As someone who is currently working on several QT apps that also work on mobile: That's an absolute lie. You need a lot of extra work to get it to work on both the desktop and mobile. Realistically you have to build the UI twice, QML is nowhere near as "responsive" as html/css. It's also prone to sluggishness. I stick with Qt because I enjoy working in C++, it's just simpler to have the whole app in one language. My users also told me they dislike electron like you. But it's very disingenuous to tell people that Qt is "just as easy" to build desktop/mobile hybrid apps, they'll be sorely disappointed if they take your word.
  - LorenDB 3y ago
    That may be your experience, but for the right kind of app (e.g. simpler apps) I can confirm from experience that apart from setting up the Android app manifest, Qt apps don't need modifications to port, especially if you design convergence in from the get-go.
wpm 3y ago
>It's the best and most used cross-platform GUI framework that has ever existed. Just because it's the best on that has ever existed, doesn't make it good. It's just the least bad. >Nobody has ever been able to make this work outside of the web browser. Sure would be nice if everyone would give up then and we could go back to having nice, native apps using native controls, file operations, encoding, hardware access, performance, UI/UX patterns, and security features, instead of letting all that rot on the vine while we reinvent the wheel on the browser.
- selfmodruntime 3y ago
  > Just because it's the best on that has ever existed, doesn't make it good. It's just the least bad. The web browser features a set of technologies that are standardized across a wide array of different implementations. Except for a few minor differences, you can view a website in Safari, Chrome, FireFox, Edge, Brave, the list goes on. It's a technological wonder. I'm still amazed people hate on it.
  - Affric 3y ago
    There are three implementations you’ve listed for actual rendering: WebKit, Blink, Gecko. And it’s unlikely we will ever see another due to how complicated they are to build. It’s been becoming less diverse for almost two decades now. And you’ve ignored the fact that every web view we have had on desktop so far is kinda crappy and sluggish when at least well built native apps generally feel snappy. Webviews are one step about shitty Java apps (you know the ones) in terms of UI. Beyond that there’s the RAM usage. Be no longer amazed that people can have these problems which no web app they have used has overcome on three or four different computing platforms.
- wvenable 3y ago
  We are absolutely reinventing the wheel on the browser but in the end up we have single broadly compatible platform across devices both small and large, with multiple implementations, and mostly all open source. It runs completely untrusted sandboxed applications. The browser is the ultimate OS for anything that doesn't require raw performance or deep integration. People have been trying to make that since the dawn of computers. But designing something like that top-down has proven virtually impossible to get right. Building it bottom-up like we have with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and now even WASM ensures that what gets built is actually secure and practical. It might not be pretty but it works. Even performance, which is the number one criticism of electron apps, is something that can be solved. When you Microsoft looking at making the webview a common reuable component again, what is native between something like WPF/XAML and DOM/HTML is merely a matter of perspective.
flangola7 3y ago
>Why should Microsoft roll their own solution? Because they're fucking Microsoft. Mutilated websites posing as apps are for hobby projects. They're in charge of the vast majority of desktop operating system interaction, if my pitiful 17 dev company can write all-native programs, so can they.

LorenDB 3y ago

Wrong - I can use Qt and QML to make an app that compiles and runs, unmodified, on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, and others. It can even run on web with WASM. And I wouldn't call web apps "native" or "the best".

wvenable 3y ago
Developers want to take their web applications and turn them into desktop applications, not the other way around. The web is the master platform. Qt has had decades to win over this space and failed. Github slapped Chromium together with Nodejs and took over the entire market of cross platform GUI development overnight. I might not like it but I understand it completely.
tredre3 3y ago
> I can use Qt and QML to make an app that compiles and runs, unmodified, on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, and others. As someone who is currently working on several QT apps that also work on mobile: That's an absolute lie. You need a lot of extra work to get it to work on both the desktop and mobile. Realistically you have to build the UI twice, QML is nowhere near as "responsive" as html/css. It's also prone to sluggishness. I stick with Qt because I enjoy working in C++, it's just simpler to have the whole app in one language. My users also told me they dislike electron like you. But it's very disingenuous to tell people that Qt is "just as easy" to build desktop/mobile hybrid apps, they'll be sorely disappointed if they take your word.
- LorenDB 3y ago
  That may be your experience, but for the right kind of app (e.g. simpler apps) I can confirm from experience that apart from setting up the Android app manifest, Qt apps don't need modifications to port, especially if you design convergence in from the get-go.

wpm 3y ago

>It's the best and most used cross-platform GUI framework that has ever existed. Just because it's the best on that has ever existed, doesn't make it good. It's just the least bad. >Nobody has ever been able to make this work outside of the web browser. Sure would be nice if everyone would give up then and we could go back to having nice, native apps using native controls, file operations, encoding, hardware access, performance, UI/UX patterns, and security features, instead of letting all that rot on the vine while we reinvent the wheel on the browser.

selfmodruntime 3y ago
> Just because it's the best on that has ever existed, doesn't make it good. It's just the least bad. The web browser features a set of technologies that are standardized across a wide array of different implementations. Except for a few minor differences, you can view a website in Safari, Chrome, FireFox, Edge, Brave, the list goes on. It's a technological wonder. I'm still amazed people hate on it.
- Affric 3y ago
  There are three implementations you’ve listed for actual rendering: WebKit, Blink, Gecko. And it’s unlikely we will ever see another due to how complicated they are to build. It’s been becoming less diverse for almost two decades now. And you’ve ignored the fact that every web view we have had on desktop so far is kinda crappy and sluggish when at least well built native apps generally feel snappy. Webviews are one step about shitty Java apps (you know the ones) in terms of UI. Beyond that there’s the RAM usage. Be no longer amazed that people can have these problems which no web app they have used has overcome on three or four different computing platforms.
wvenable 3y ago
We are absolutely reinventing the wheel on the browser but in the end up we have single broadly compatible platform across devices both small and large, with multiple implementations, and mostly all open source. It runs completely untrusted sandboxed applications. The browser is the ultimate OS for anything that doesn't require raw performance or deep integration. People have been trying to make that since the dawn of computers. But designing something like that top-down has proven virtually impossible to get right. Building it bottom-up like we have with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and now even WASM ensures that what gets built is actually secure and practical. It might not be pretty but it works. Even performance, which is the number one criticism of electron apps, is something that can be solved. When you Microsoft looking at making the webview a common reuable component again, what is native between something like WPF/XAML and DOM/HTML is merely a matter of perspective.

flangola7 3y ago

>Why should Microsoft roll their own solution? Because they're fucking Microsoft. Mutilated websites posing as apps are for hobby projects. They're in charge of the vast majority of desktop operating system interaction, if my pitiful 17 dev company can write all-native programs, so can they.