24 ms·

the answer could possibly anyone who cares about the footprint of their software (disk, egress, image running size...), not wanting to deal with an entire brows

the answer could possibly anyone who cares about the footprint of their software (disk, egress, image running size...), not wanting to deal with an entire browser engine (in every aspect) wpf is still heavily used in industry so that isnt very convincing to me

pipeline_peak 3y ago
> anyone who cares about the footprint of their software That’s why I mention performance critical > wpf is still heavily used in industry But is anything new being made with wpf? Because that’s why I left that area.
- sitzkrieg 3y ago
  i actually am working on greenfield wpf currently but ill be first to admit thats an exception. windows shop still reach for it heavily in "boring" industry in my experience. there is a difference between performance critical and sloppy of course. most people default to heavy crap cuz its good enough, or a good fit sometimes, i get that and this is coming from someone who had to use wpf for software where it ended up too slow in all rendering paths despite MS "trust us bro" and had to render using directx directly. not super uncommon but we were paying the price early (.net fw 3, fuzy wpf text, vibrating layouts, the good days)
  - Tomte 3y ago
    > but ill be first to admit thats an exception No, that‘s very common. I‘m peripherally involved in such a greenfield project, too. And my employer is (very) slowly switching existing WinForms applications to WPF. It‘s the new thing. (I know that there are a handful newer MS GUI frameworks, but for us it‘s new)
    - sitzkrieg 3y ago
      interesting, i was wpf old hat and had to justify it vs winui3 (directly) and maui they are both too new
- neonsunset 3y ago
  Yes, but that's against common advice to use AvaloniaUI instead.
  - JaggerJo 3y ago
    We use AvaloniaUI in production for a handfull of apps. Couldn’t be happier.
  - sitzkrieg 3y ago
    this is not cross platform work, but i checked that out and will def keep in mind! esp considering all the AOT limitations in the real world
creshal 3y ago
Also heavily used in the industry are toolkits like sciter, which give you HTML/CSS UIs without an entire browser engine underneath. I suspect those will be eating the remaining market share for 'traditional' toolkits, simply because it's the dominant UI paradigm.
- temporarely 3y ago
  Thanks for that! That sounds very sane. I agree that dragging an entire browser engine just to have a desktop app is excessive -- less code is always better. https://sciter.com/developers/engine-architecture/ https://sciter.com/developers/engine-architecture/
- The_Colonel 3y ago
  The motivation behind using electron is: a) being able to deploy same codebase on web and desktop b) reusing the vast selection of libraries for web c) tapping the large amount of trained developers. Sciter fails on a) and b), because it doesn't support even such a basic and widely used feature as CSS flex (they have something similar, but incompatible). Even c) is very debatable.
  - jodleif 3y ago
    The path to hell is paved with good intentions
  - jayde2767 3y ago
    Regarding CSS and layout in general, there is a concept of sizers and spacers in wxWidgets that makes layout far easier to grok for the average dev. That being said, it does (sadly) add to code bloat which is where CSS excels, IMO.
  - nicoburns 3y ago
    I'm currently working on a Sciter-like solution that does support widely used CSS features such as Flexbox, CSS Grid, Media Queries, CSS Variables, etc. Although we're not planning to ship a JS engine: scripting will be with Rust that compiles to WASM when running on web. Binary sizes are currently around ~12mb which isn't as good as Sciter but is quite a bit better than Electron.
mrec 3y ago
What's the "egress" footprint you mention? I hadn't come across the word in this context before.
- sitzkrieg 3y ago
  outbound bandwidth on say, "cloud" providers like aws. it can be very expensive. we have been actively reducing our installer sizes, for our costs (edge, cdn, some internal egresses), customer bandwidth, and basically giving a shit and doing a decent job. rare stuff these days

pipeline_peak 3y ago

> anyone who cares about the footprint of their software That’s why I mention performance critical > wpf is still heavily used in industry But is anything new being made with wpf? Because that’s why I left that area.

sitzkrieg 3y ago
i actually am working on greenfield wpf currently but ill be first to admit thats an exception. windows shop still reach for it heavily in "boring" industry in my experience. there is a difference between performance critical and sloppy of course. most people default to heavy crap cuz its good enough, or a good fit sometimes, i get that and this is coming from someone who had to use wpf for software where it ended up too slow in all rendering paths despite MS "trust us bro" and had to render using directx directly. not super uncommon but we were paying the price early (.net fw 3, fuzy wpf text, vibrating layouts, the good days)
- Tomte 3y ago
  > but ill be first to admit thats an exception No, that‘s very common. I‘m peripherally involved in such a greenfield project, too. And my employer is (very) slowly switching existing WinForms applications to WPF. It‘s the new thing. (I know that there are a handful newer MS GUI frameworks, but for us it‘s new)
  - sitzkrieg 3y ago
    interesting, i was wpf old hat and had to justify it vs winui3 (directly) and maui they are both too new
neonsunset 3y ago
Yes, but that's against common advice to use AvaloniaUI instead.
- JaggerJo 3y ago
  We use AvaloniaUI in production for a handfull of apps. Couldn’t be happier.
- sitzkrieg 3y ago
  this is not cross platform work, but i checked that out and will def keep in mind! esp considering all the AOT limitations in the real world

creshal 3y ago

Also heavily used in the industry are toolkits like sciter, which give you HTML/CSS UIs without an entire browser engine underneath. I suspect those will be eating the remaining market share for 'traditional' toolkits, simply because it's the dominant UI paradigm.

temporarely 3y ago
Thanks for that! That sounds very sane. I agree that dragging an entire browser engine just to have a desktop app is excessive -- less code is always better. https://sciter.com/developers/engine-architecture/ https://sciter.com/developers/engine-architecture/
The_Colonel 3y ago
The motivation behind using electron is: a) being able to deploy same codebase on web and desktop b) reusing the vast selection of libraries for web c) tapping the large amount of trained developers. Sciter fails on a) and b), because it doesn't support even such a basic and widely used feature as CSS flex (they have something similar, but incompatible). Even c) is very debatable.
- jodleif 3y ago
  The path to hell is paved with good intentions
- jayde2767 3y ago
  Regarding CSS and layout in general, there is a concept of sizers and spacers in wxWidgets that makes layout far easier to grok for the average dev. That being said, it does (sadly) add to code bloat which is where CSS excels, IMO.
- nicoburns 3y ago
  I'm currently working on a Sciter-like solution that does support widely used CSS features such as Flexbox, CSS Grid, Media Queries, CSS Variables, etc. Although we're not planning to ship a JS engine: scripting will be with Rust that compiles to WASM when running on web. Binary sizes are currently around ~12mb which isn't as good as Sciter but is quite a bit better than Electron.

mrec 3y ago

What's the "egress" footprint you mention? I hadn't come across the word in this context before.

sitzkrieg 3y ago
outbound bandwidth on say, "cloud" providers like aws. it can be very expensive. we have been actively reducing our installer sizes, for our costs (edge, cdn, some internal egresses), customer bandwidth, and basically giving a shit and doing a decent job. rare stuff these days