5 ms·
Lynx: Open Source Native Cross Platform framework used in TikTok
- gorbypark 2y agoSeems interesting. Coming from the react native world, competition is good! This seems to have a from scratch layout engine, which is pretty exciting. It looks like it supports some of the more recent/advanced CSS features. It also has a javascript engine based on QuickJS. I can't wait for a more technical deep dive into how this works and compares to react native.
- woleium 2y agoAre we intentionally reusing project names now? Lynx [1] is a fairly popular tui browser. I guess it doesn’t support ssl or tls, so is now obsolete? W3M [2] is a decent tui alternative that does. Or if you use kitty, awrit [3] is nice, with images and mouse support (it renders chromium in a terminal window) [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_(web_browser) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_(web_browser) [2] https://w3m.sourceforge.net/ https://w3m.sourceforge.net/ [3] https://github.com/chase/awrit https://github.com/chase/awrit
- classichasclass 2y agoLynx absolutely supports TLS (2.8 and later, possibly earlier).
- zimpenfish 2y ago> Lynx absolutely supports TLS And has done (in various forms) since at least 2001!
- Klonoar 2y agoProject name reuse has been a thing since the dawn of projects.
- jakereps 2y agoI can't tell if this is satire or a hidden advertisement for various tui browsers? A project that is a "popular tui browser" (for the literally dozens of people that use tui browsers?) does not have ownership claim to the name of a big cat genus which has 4k+ other results on GitHub with the same name.
- mftrhu 2y agoLynx is a well-known project which has been around for far longer than Github even existed - since 1992, in fact - which is in any case irrelevant, since it's not developed on GitHub: the commits for ThomasDickey/lynx-snapshots are snapshots of the code from the website proper.
- jakereps 2y agoRemoved the star count as any sort of “evidence” to popularity - the point still stands though. It feels absurd to claim a name being “reused,” or implied stolen, when the name is a generic animal name.
- whstl 2y agoBikeshedding about names, article titles and tangential annoyances is HN’s favorite pastime, and an easy way to get karma. As old as the hills.
- v9v 2y agoI believe it's spelled as "pastime" :)
- janderson215 2y ago^art
- woleium 2y agoi am not affiliated with any of the projects, its just what i use.
- tpoacher 2y agoIt's not even a good name for a cross platform tiktok network. I would have stolen a name like Transmission, or Bing instead.
- huxpro 2y agoThe Lynx project was originally named independently without thinking this far ahead. Since so much code and so many users already rely on it, we decided to stick with the name rather than change it just for open-sourcing.
- DannyPage 2y agoOpen-sourcing is/was the perfect time to change it. Otherwise it might be even more painful if a name change is needed later.
- bangaladore 2y agoAnd why exactly would a name change be needed later? Names are just names, many people have the same names, and projects can too.
- michaelmior 2y agoGenerally agreed. I think unique names for projects are nice, but unless the projects have very similar goals, I think having the same name isn't really a big deal.
- aaplok 2y agoPlenty of people have the same name, but if you call your child Brad Pitt, it will be interpreted as a reference to the famous guy bearing that name, and nobody will believe it is a coincidence. Lynx doesn't have a large user base (I think) but it is installed by default on many linux distros. Having to install two programs with the same name is a pain which is only resolved by renaming one of them (at the distro or the user level).
- bangaladore 2y agoBit misleading. The analogy is closer to naming your child "Genevieve" when another Genevieve exists in the school. Lynx is a fairly common and well understood word. > Lynx doesn't have a large user base (I think) but it is installed by default on many linux distros. Having to install two programs with the same name is a pain which is only resolved by renaming one of them (at the distro or the user level). This is a fault of the distros. At some point keeping niche software will cause issues and conflicts.
- nemothekid 2y ago>Are we intentionally reusing project names now? Lynx [1] is a fairly popular tui browser. The kids who built this are probably younger than the Lynx project and likely don't know it exists.
- Apocryphon 2y agoIndeed, they should rename it to Jaguar.
- jamespo 2y agoJust tried to browse the web on my Atari Lynx.
- fngjdflmdflg 2y ago>Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting. Name collisions are so common that the guidelines tell us not to talk about them. Why would you assume that this is intentional? And then the rest of your post is just about different tui browsers? How is this the top comment?
- woleium 2y agooops, sorry!
- fngjdflmdflg 2y agoLikewise sorry for writing what was on re-reading a rude comment.
- Creator44 2y ago[dead]
- polyrand 2y agoI remember listening to a Syntax FM[0] with Zack Jackson from ByteDance, which mentioned this framework briefly. Some quotes and notes from that part of the podcast: - All ByteDance products, even native apps, are web-based - They have an in-house framework called "Lynx" which is essentially their version of React Native[1] - "All apps are Lynx apps. Everything is a Lynx app. It's all backed off the same stack." - This approach allows them to maintain a unified architecture while having specialized teams focus on different aspects (algorithms, compiler, kernel, etc.) [0]: https://syntax.fm/show/860/module-federation-microfrontends-with-bytedance-s-zack-jackson https://syntax.fm/show/860/module-federation-microfrontends-... [1]: The one being released, in the podcast they confirmed they would be open-sourcing it this year
- suzakus 2y agoI work at ByteDance (though not for long). Most of the "sexy" part of the app is native, or C++ crossplatform for things that would normally be in C++. I'm not sure I'm allowed to share what Lynx is used on, but it's a small subset of the app.
- NoahKAndrews 2y agoMakes sense, the announcement blog said it was only specific screens, such as search.
- suzakus 2y agoI went to watch the podcast – he's heavily overplaying how much cross platform web dev is used on the native platforms. He doesn't seem to be in the biggest channels for both iOS and Android developers (the largest 'IOS'/'Android' release/global channels).
- polyrand 2y agoThanks. What do you mean with "native" (vs. C++)? What I assumed from the podcast is that there's a lot of internal reusable tools in C++, and the web-based stuff is mostly about the UI layer. Is there a lot of WASM to use both at the same time?
- xnx 2y agoTikTok is impressively multi-device. It works well on Android, iPhone, Android TV, and web. Compared to Instagram, where the web version has always been behind the mobile version, TikTok really seems to make each device version the best possible.
- vips7L 2y agoI'm pretty sure for Instagram it's by design, not because of their technical stack.
- serial_dev 2y agoInstagram web is so bad that it’s the only logical explanation.
- kridsdale1 2y agoI have worked in the Instagram ios source. It is FUCKING AWFUL. They’re impressive in their business success given their code quality.
- qingcharles 2y agoThere isn't even a real iPad app (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
- swiftcoder 2y agoWorth considering that this is an explicit business decision (not enough iPad users to justify the development effort), versus a technical one. There were various builds with proper iPad layout floating around internally, but no one ever got the management buy-in to polish it enough to ship.
- vips7L 2y agoI don’t think I’ve ever worked anywhere that had decent code quality
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoNot to be confused with Lynx Browser: The Land That Time Revived https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43119238 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43119238
- henning 2y agohttps://lynxjs.org/ https://lynxjs.org/ doesn't scroll smoothly.
- exikyut 2y agoWhat browser/platform? Flutter apps don't scroll at 30/60fps on my aging Mate 20 Pro, but that website is fine for me in Chrome.
- qq99 2y ago> However, Lynx isn't limited to React I think this could be huge! I'd love to see a SolidJS version
- synergy20 2y agothe code examples etc though is 100% react at this point. for me I would like to see a vue.js version.
- diggan 2y agoGot curious enough to wanting to give it a go, so on the quickstart page it says: > Lynx Explorer is a sandbox for trying out Lynx quickly. And then it asks me to use either the iOS Simulator or the Android Simulator, which based on experience, neither are made for anything resembling "quickly". Anyone know if there are any "pure-web" instructions around? Skimmed around the docs, website and repository but didn't find anything that looked like it was made for just web setup.
- hkalbasi 2y ago> iOS Simulator or the Android Simulator, which based on experience, neither are made for anything resembling "quickly". It's not adb / avd or some device emulator. It's an app that you install on your device, and then it can load your app from your development device using a link. I was able to run it in 5 minutes without having android studio or any other android development kits on my laptop.
- Oxodao 2y agoThats neat. It makes me think of expo [0] that does it in the same way, pretty useful to try stuff quickly, but forces to go though their servers. [0] https://expo.dev/ https://expo.dev/
- Nelkins 2y agoI see there's Lynx for Web[0]. Does that also adhere to the two-threads model (one for UI, one for background)? Also, is this something that React/Native may adopt itself one day? Curious to know if this is a technique that may be adopted by the React ecoystem itself, or if it's just too far outside the bounds of what React is supposed to handle. [0] https://github.com/lynx-family/lynx-stack/tree/main/packages/web-platform https://github.com/lynx-family/lynx-stack/tree/main/packages...
- diggan 2y agoThanks for finding that, was out after the web portion myself (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43269966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43269966) As far as I can tell, it has the same model, at least judging by the directory names (web-worker-runtime, web-worker-rpc, web-mainthread-apis, etc).
- Nelkins 2y agoI'm also a little confused about how to get started. According to the docs you have to embed it into an existing app[0], but the quickstart suggests otherwise[1]. [0] https://lynxjs.org/guide/start/integrate-with-existing-apps.html#integrate-with-existing-apps https://lynxjs.org/guide/start/integrate-with-existing-apps.... [1] https://lynxjs.org/guide/start/quick-start.html#quick-start https://lynxjs.org/guide/start/quick-start.html#quick-start
- pjmlp 2y agoI see very little native on that.
- KaoruAoiShiho 2y agoWould be interested in using this if not for the lack of LLM support. Can you also explain what the advantages are over React Native?
- hooverd 2y agoLynx doesn't support LLMs or there's not documentation?
- alaq 2y agoI bet they mean LLMs don't know the syntax, and won't be helpful in writing code for it.
- swiftcoder 2y agoBy this criteria, we can literally never release any new programming languages or frameworks ever again... If LLMs are going to be as useful as they claim, they have to be smart/flexible enough to adapt to new information.
- lyu07282 2y ago> Would be interested in using this if not for the lack of LLM support. I'm not even in the anti-LLM crowd, but that sentence made me shake my head in disgust
- gejose 2y agoHow so?
- whoknowsidont 2y agoPrimarily because the sentence doesn't even make any sense? It seems like rage bait.
- hnlurker22 2y agoApple and Google need to talk. They need to collaborate on something truly native to put an end to these bloated frameworks. My goodness the amount of engineering work being put into terrible mobile experiences is worse than how much Nasa is spending to look for water in space. Any mobile app designers out there think TikTok has good UX? I mean scrolling video is great, but everything else?
- endofreach 2y ago> Any mobile app designers out there think TikTok has good UX? I mean scrolling video is great, but everything else? You wouldn't ask a doctor if she thinks crack is great, right?
- conductr 2y agoSilly nitpick but wouldn't this be more like asking a crack dealer if this particular crack is great? No matter what their answer, the fact there is a crack epidemic tells you the real answer. People aren't always wanting top shelf crack, some times the hood crack is the good crack.
- wiseowise 2y agoGoogle already did the talking for both of them. It’s called Flutter.
- mytenthaccount 2y agoSupport for CSS transitions (and animations) on a native UI thread would be huge. React Native Renanimated is cumbersome and painful to use everywhere. Sadly I finally ditched my MacBook for a Linux PC since Expo/EAS has liberated me from needing Xcode. I won’t be able to try this out for iOS development.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- klabb3 2y agoNative now means mobile only? That’s a depressing state of affairs. Cross platform and then not even mentioning you’re limited to 2 out of the 5 more popular OSs. Just say you rewrote React Native if that’s all.
- SparkyMcUnicorn 2y agoAlso supports the web, and it looks like they might intend to support more platforms. `readonly platform: 'Android' | 'iOS' | 'macOS' | 'pc' | 'headless';` > Not only is the core engine of Lynx framework-agnostic, but it's also agnostic to host platforms and rendering backends ... expand to even more platforms, such as Desktop, TV, or IoT devices.
- hackape 2y ago[dead]
- ksec 2y agoSo it is basically a rebranded React Native? Or completely different? Or could someone ELI5 / TL;DR? The whole blog post is basically saying how good Lynx is and what problem it solves without telling me much technical details.
- rubicks 2y agoNo. No, it isn't. Lynx is a browser I use in the terminal. This is something else.
- andrewstuart 2y agoI recently looked closely at cross platform mobile mobile development. Despite distrusting Google and despite knowing react I chose flutter. I want something fast with close to total cross platform compatibility. Net Maui is not well spoken of. React native seems slow. The only real choice fir my needs is flutter. Let’s see how long it holds up.
- stevev 2y agoTry ReactLynx first.
- tommica 2y agoQuickly tested it out, and gotta say that I enjoy being able to write just normal CSS to style things. The getting started process is really speedy.
- x1unix 2y agoInteresting if Lynx uses host OS widgets like RN does or renders stuff itself like Flutter.