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> "web browsers are good at handling complex and long-lived DOM trees with dynamic changes now" Is there an alternative renderer/something that handles "comple

by diggan 3y ago

> "web browsers are good at handling complex and long-lived DOM trees with dynamic changes now" Is there an alternative renderer/something that handles "complex and long-lived $something-trees with dynamic changes" better than web engines does? They've been optimized for just that during decades at this point, with huge investments both in human-hours and money. Hard to imagine there is something else that can handle that better than browser engines.

Const-me 3y ago
On Windows, WPF is better: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Presentation_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Presentation_Foundatio... The critical features missing from HTML are data binding and data templates. Last time I checked, many modern frontend frameworks contain overcomplicated, incomplete, and inefficient implementations of these features on top of HTML DOM.
- diggan 3y ago
  I'm not super familiar with Microsoft's offerings, but is WPF available cross-platform? It's hard to argue something that is only on one platform is better when it only have to do 25% of what a cross-platform solution would do.
  - Const-me 3y ago
    Sadly, WPF is Windows-only. There’s an equivalent cross-platform GUI framework called Avalonia https://www.avaloniaui.net/ https://www.avaloniaui.net/ I don’t have a hands-on experience with it, but based on the internets I have an impression the tech is pretty good by now.
troupo 3y ago
> Is there an alternative renderer/something that handles "complex and long-lived $something-trees with dynamic changes" better than web engines does? Literally everything else. My favorite recent example is: 1000 objects with complex behaviour, lighting and animations takes 4 microseconds to render, at 9:36: https://youtu.be/kXd0VDZDSks?si=PjqeFVoSTPSsbdIk https://youtu.be/kXd0VDZDSks?si=PjqeFVoSTPSsbdIk > They've been optimized for just that during decades at this point You can't optimize beyond the limitiations of the ad-hoc hackish nature of the web. There's only so much optimisation you can do when even the simplest of things will cause re-flow and re-render o the entire page. Well, games redraw the entire screen, but they can draw thousands of objects in a fraction of time it takes the web browser to figure out how to layout them. Edit: - Figma had to reimplement everything from scratch in WebGL because browsers (that is, DOM) are just bad - Google Docs and Google Sheets reimplemented everything in canvas, once again bypassing the "greatest renderer on earth" to be able to render and control the rendering.

by diggan 3y ago

Const-me 3y ago

On Windows, WPF is better: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Presentation_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Presentation_Foundatio... The critical features missing from HTML are data binding and data templates. Last time I checked, many modern frontend frameworks contain overcomplicated, incomplete, and inefficient implementations of these features on top of HTML DOM.

diggan 3y ago
I'm not super familiar with Microsoft's offerings, but is WPF available cross-platform? It's hard to argue something that is only on one platform is better when it only have to do 25% of what a cross-platform solution would do.
- Const-me 3y ago
  Sadly, WPF is Windows-only. There’s an equivalent cross-platform GUI framework called Avalonia https://www.avaloniaui.net/ https://www.avaloniaui.net/ I don’t have a hands-on experience with it, but based on the internets I have an impression the tech is pretty good by now.

troupo 3y ago

> Is there an alternative renderer/something that handles "complex and long-lived $something-trees with dynamic changes" better than web engines does? Literally everything else. My favorite recent example is: 1000 objects with complex behaviour, lighting and animations takes 4 microseconds to render, at 9:36: https://youtu.be/kXd0VDZDSks?si=PjqeFVoSTPSsbdIk https://youtu.be/kXd0VDZDSks?si=PjqeFVoSTPSsbdIk > They've been optimized for just that during decades at this point You can't optimize beyond the limitiations of the ad-hoc hackish nature of the web. There's only so much optimisation you can do when even the simplest of things will cause re-flow and re-render o the entire page. Well, games redraw the entire screen, but they can draw thousands of objects in a fraction of time it takes the web browser to figure out how to layout them. Edit: - Figma had to reimplement everything from scratch in WebGL because browsers (that is, DOM) are just bad - Google Docs and Google Sheets reimplemented everything in canvas, once again bypassing the "greatest renderer on earth" to be able to render and control the rendering.