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>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'

by 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.

by wpm 3y ago

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.