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> Applications don't map too well onto HTML I'm not sure if I totally agree with this take, but if it's true that's a great reason to not build web application

> Applications don't map too well onto HTML I'm not sure if I totally agree with this take, but if it's true that's a great reason to not build web applications. If the medium isn't right for the use case, why force it?

gavmor 2y ago
It's a great delivery channel.
9dev 2y ago
Because it's the only ubiquitous, actual multi-platform delivery channel we have. Web browsers are available on pretty much any device in the hands of users right now. And while HTML doesn't map too well, it is certainly good enough—there are simply no viable alternatives anyway, so people are going to use what is available.
- _heimdall 2y ago
  Do you think it would be as good of a delivery channel if browsers focus more on features needed to build applications rather than to view documents? In my experience, application-specific features are really what made the modern web complex and bloated. Building applicstion frameworks and operating systems is insanely difficult, much more so than building a standard document format and rendering protocol. Can the web be used for applications? Absolutely. But my argument would be that it almost never should be. Native applications will always handle that better, and though there isn't a great cross platform solution for applications today we'd be better off building that than shoehorning that usecase into the web.
  - 9dev 2y ago
    But that just doesn't match the way people use the web, like it or not. Building native applications just isn't worth it for many businesses: You need to adhere to compliance and security, different platforms and operating system versions, keep track of different system APIs, handle a giant matrix of build targets, prepare and maintain installation guides with possibly required client SDKs and dependencies, employ specialists for every platform... it's an extremely wide field. Compare to the web: A single platform to build for. A single API to keep track of. A sandboxed runtime environment with zero dependencies, available on virtually every client system. A way to communicate with your servers that works, even in tightly guarded networks. A giant amount of documentation, available developers, and resources. In an ideal world, I'd like to see native applications for everything. In the world we have, constraints prohibit that. So for better or worse, the web has to be mended into the universal application runtime environment we use it as.
lylejantzi3rd 2y ago
I thought that exact thought a while back, so I decided to fill in one of the gaps in my application arsenal by building a native application that does nothing but display a grid of images quickly. It's a gallery app. After trying to make the most basic version of this app I can imagine, here's my takeaway on desktop application development: it sucks. Badly. Displaying a grid of images in a webapp is a few lines of javascript and a few lines of html. In most native application development systems I've seen, it's 20 lines of code just to open the window. To be fair, the web makes easy things easy and hard things impossible, whereas native desktop applications make easy things hard and hard things possible. But, I definitely see now why most developers prefer to build things in electron.
mardifoufs 2y ago
What's an easier/better way to style an app then? It sure isn't easier with QT (unless you use QSS or QML, both of which are inspired by how you'd build an app on the web).
- _heimdall 2y ago
  Easier and better really need context. For me, styling a UI in CSS is easier than manually coding a UI for an iOS app. The visual UI builder in VS Code is pretty damn nice though, and I find that easier than CSS for complex UI. If I need to do anything related to complex state changes, animations, page navigations, etc I'd also much rather use a native applications built with that scenario in mind. There are a ton of things we simply can't do with CSS - we're starting to see experimental features for simple page animations but they're very limited and manual. I worked on the Windows Phone UI framework back in the day, that was over a decade ago now and the kinds of navigation animations you could do with a few properties and flags was light years ahead of web page transitions today.
nsonha 2y ago
Yes, we should bend over to serve HTML. It is "the medium" that dictates what we should and should not do /s

gavmor 2y ago

It's a great delivery channel.

9dev 2y ago

Because it's the only ubiquitous, actual multi-platform delivery channel we have. Web browsers are available on pretty much any device in the hands of users right now. And while HTML doesn't map too well, it is certainly good enough—there are simply no viable alternatives anyway, so people are going to use what is available.

_heimdall 2y ago
Do you think it would be as good of a delivery channel if browsers focus more on features needed to build applications rather than to view documents? In my experience, application-specific features are really what made the modern web complex and bloated. Building applicstion frameworks and operating systems is insanely difficult, much more so than building a standard document format and rendering protocol. Can the web be used for applications? Absolutely. But my argument would be that it almost never should be. Native applications will always handle that better, and though there isn't a great cross platform solution for applications today we'd be better off building that than shoehorning that usecase into the web.
- 9dev 2y ago
  But that just doesn't match the way people use the web, like it or not. Building native applications just isn't worth it for many businesses: You need to adhere to compliance and security, different platforms and operating system versions, keep track of different system APIs, handle a giant matrix of build targets, prepare and maintain installation guides with possibly required client SDKs and dependencies, employ specialists for every platform... it's an extremely wide field. Compare to the web: A single platform to build for. A single API to keep track of. A sandboxed runtime environment with zero dependencies, available on virtually every client system. A way to communicate with your servers that works, even in tightly guarded networks. A giant amount of documentation, available developers, and resources. In an ideal world, I'd like to see native applications for everything. In the world we have, constraints prohibit that. So for better or worse, the web has to be mended into the universal application runtime environment we use it as.

lylejantzi3rd 2y ago

I thought that exact thought a while back, so I decided to fill in one of the gaps in my application arsenal by building a native application that does nothing but display a grid of images quickly. It's a gallery app. After trying to make the most basic version of this app I can imagine, here's my takeaway on desktop application development: it sucks. Badly. Displaying a grid of images in a webapp is a few lines of javascript and a few lines of html. In most native application development systems I've seen, it's 20 lines of code just to open the window. To be fair, the web makes easy things easy and hard things impossible, whereas native desktop applications make easy things hard and hard things possible. But, I definitely see now why most developers prefer to build things in electron.

mardifoufs 2y ago

What's an easier/better way to style an app then? It sure isn't easier with QT (unless you use QSS or QML, both of which are inspired by how you'd build an app on the web).

_heimdall 2y ago
Easier and better really need context. For me, styling a UI in CSS is easier than manually coding a UI for an iOS app. The visual UI builder in VS Code is pretty damn nice though, and I find that easier than CSS for complex UI. If I need to do anything related to complex state changes, animations, page navigations, etc I'd also much rather use a native applications built with that scenario in mind. There are a ton of things we simply can't do with CSS - we're starting to see experimental features for simple page animations but they're very limited and manual. I worked on the Windows Phone UI framework back in the day, that was over a decade ago now and the kinds of navigation animations you could do with a few properties and flags was light years ahead of web page transitions today.

nsonha 2y ago

Yes, we should bend over to serve HTML. It is "the medium" that dictates what we should and should not do /s