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Personally I love it. HTML/CSS is still the best, most well documented and familiar gui framework

by andoando 11mo ago

samdoesnothing 11mo ago
Have you used other ones? Not a dig, I've primarily used HTML/CSS for UIs and have been playing around with Compose recently and haven't made up my mind what I like more.
- nish__ 11mo ago
  Same here. I've grown to really love Jetpack Compose. Personally, I'd say I like it better than any other framework I've tried before.
ranger_danger 11mo ago
The problem is performance... requiring a web browser to draw a UI takes a LOT of CPU and memory, and not all devices have enough power to deliver a smooth experience across all potential workloads. I worry that every year we keep increasing our processing requirements and bloat without good reason for it. Why should every Windows release require a faster and faster CPU, and more and more RAM? The recommended amount of memory for Windows 95 was 8 megabytes, and for Windows 11 it is 8 gigabytes. Why is this not horrifying? My small Linux system with openbox GUI barely cracks 100MB memory usage in 2025.
- Rohansi 11mo ago
  > requiring a web browser to draw a UI takes a LOT of CPU and memory What makes a browser so much more inefficient vs. other UI frameworks? Is it really the browser's fault or the website's you're visiting?
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  - troupo 11mo ago
    What makes the browser slow and inefficient is the fact that it's not a UI framework. It's a system to display text and a couple of images on a 2D plane where every element depends on every other element. Almost every single interaction and change requires the browser to recalculate the layout of the entire page and to redraw it. It's basically Microsoft Word, with nearly the same behaviors. And there are no proper ways to prevent that behaviour. No lower and low level control over rendering. Awkward workarounds and hacks that browsers employ to try and minimize re-layouting and redrawing. Great rejoicing when introducing yet more hacks for basic things: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/css-ui/animate-to-height-auto https://developer.chrome.com/docs/css-ui/animate-to-height-a... etc.
    - wiseowise 11mo ago
      That’s just plain wrong, even ChatGPT will rebuke your comment. I’m sure someone working on Blink/WebKit will just laugh at your comment.
      - troupo 11mo ago
        "even ChatGPT" lol Here's a deeper dive. It's about animations, but it explains issues in a nice way that "even ChatGPT" can understand: https://motion.dev/blog/web-animation-performance-tier-list https://motion.dev/blog/web-animation-performance-tier-list
    - Rohansi 11mo ago
      > It's a system to display text and a couple of images on a 2D plane And how is that different from a UI framework? > Almost every single interaction and change requires the browser to recalculate the layout of the entire page and to redraw it. What UI frameworks don't do this?
      - troupo 11mo ago
        > And how is that different from a UI framework? In none of them text is primary and all other incidental? > What UI frameworks don't do this? In which UI framework actions like "set focus on an element" triggers a full page re-layout? Also, in which UI framework there's even a discussion of "try to not trigger re-paint/re-flow"? And yes, I know about immediate mode UI where the entire layout is re-calculated every frame. But then they can usually render thousands of elements at 60fps.
  - mschuster91 11mo ago
    > What makes a browser so much more inefficient vs. other UI frameworks? The fact that each app carries their own copy of the browser engine. Teams, Chrome, Steam - that's at least three Chromium engine embeds that all take up hundreds of megabytes each. Not to mention Steam is in the background and has no windows visible, and yet it has the Chromium helper processes gobbling up RAM. WTF is this shit. Life used to be easier in the Windows 98 days with OCX, you just dragged a webview in the VB6 application designer and that was it, and IIRC it was even possible to embed Firefox in the same way for a while...
    - Rohansi 11mo ago
      > The fact that each app carries their own copy of the browser engine. This has nothing to do with the browser itself. Ideally everything would use the same browser instead of shipping their own. On Windows it's already possible with WebView2 but developers need to choose to go that route. Teams should already be using it.
- shooly 11mo ago
  > Why should every Windows release require a faster and faster CPU, and more and more RAM? I don't know. But does it? It doesn't seem like you verified that yourself - you're comparing stated recommended specs of Windows to actual usage of Linux.
- edoceo 11mo ago
  There are slim webviews, that can do core HTML and CSS, make a nice UI and not chew all the RAM.
  - ranger_danger 11mo ago
    Could you provide some examples?
NooneAtAll3 11mo ago
html/css yes js? get that thing off of me

Personally I love it. HTML/CSS is still the best, most well documented and familiar gui framework

Have you used other ones? Not a dig, I've primarily used HTML/CSS for UIs and have been playing around with Compose recently and haven't made up my mind what I like more.

nish__ 11mo ago
Same here. I've grown to really love Jetpack Compose. Personally, I'd say I like it better than any other framework I've tried before.

ranger_danger 11mo ago

The problem is performance... requiring a web browser to draw a UI takes a LOT of CPU and memory, and not all devices have enough power to deliver a smooth experience across all potential workloads. I worry that every year we keep increasing our processing requirements and bloat without good reason for it. Why should every Windows release require a faster and faster CPU, and more and more RAM? The recommended amount of memory for Windows 95 was 8 megabytes, and for Windows 11 it is 8 gigabytes. Why is this not horrifying? My small Linux system with openbox GUI barely cracks 100MB memory usage in 2025.

Rohansi 11mo ago
> requiring a web browser to draw a UI takes a LOT of CPU and memory What makes a browser so much more inefficient vs. other UI frameworks? Is it really the browser's fault or the website's you're visiting?
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- troupo 11mo ago
  What makes the browser slow and inefficient is the fact that it's not a UI framework. It's a system to display text and a couple of images on a 2D plane where every element depends on every other element. Almost every single interaction and change requires the browser to recalculate the layout of the entire page and to redraw it. It's basically Microsoft Word, with nearly the same behaviors. And there are no proper ways to prevent that behaviour. No lower and low level control over rendering. Awkward workarounds and hacks that browsers employ to try and minimize re-layouting and redrawing. Great rejoicing when introducing yet more hacks for basic things: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/css-ui/animate-to-height-auto https://developer.chrome.com/docs/css-ui/animate-to-height-a... etc.
  - wiseowise 11mo ago
    That’s just plain wrong, even ChatGPT will rebuke your comment. I’m sure someone working on Blink/WebKit will just laugh at your comment.
    - troupo 11mo ago
      "even ChatGPT" lol Here's a deeper dive. It's about animations, but it explains issues in a nice way that "even ChatGPT" can understand: https://motion.dev/blog/web-animation-performance-tier-list https://motion.dev/blog/web-animation-performance-tier-list
  - Rohansi 11mo ago
    > It's a system to display text and a couple of images on a 2D plane And how is that different from a UI framework? > Almost every single interaction and change requires the browser to recalculate the layout of the entire page and to redraw it. What UI frameworks don't do this?
    - troupo 11mo ago
      > And how is that different from a UI framework? In none of them text is primary and all other incidental? > What UI frameworks don't do this? In which UI framework actions like "set focus on an element" triggers a full page re-layout? Also, in which UI framework there's even a discussion of "try to not trigger re-paint/re-flow"? And yes, I know about immediate mode UI where the entire layout is re-calculated every frame. But then they can usually render thousands of elements at 60fps.
- mschuster91 11mo ago
  > What makes a browser so much more inefficient vs. other UI frameworks? The fact that each app carries their own copy of the browser engine. Teams, Chrome, Steam - that's at least three Chromium engine embeds that all take up hundreds of megabytes each. Not to mention Steam is in the background and has no windows visible, and yet it has the Chromium helper processes gobbling up RAM. WTF is this shit. Life used to be easier in the Windows 98 days with OCX, you just dragged a webview in the VB6 application designer and that was it, and IIRC it was even possible to embed Firefox in the same way for a while...
  - Rohansi 11mo ago
    > The fact that each app carries their own copy of the browser engine. This has nothing to do with the browser itself. Ideally everything would use the same browser instead of shipping their own. On Windows it's already possible with WebView2 but developers need to choose to go that route. Teams should already be using it.
shooly 11mo ago
> Why should every Windows release require a faster and faster CPU, and more and more RAM? I don't know. But does it? It doesn't seem like you verified that yourself - you're comparing stated recommended specs of Windows to actual usage of Linux.
edoceo 11mo ago
There are slim webviews, that can do core HTML and CSS, make a nice UI and not chew all the RAM.
- ranger_danger 11mo ago
  Could you provide some examples?

NooneAtAll3 11mo ago

html/css yes js? get that thing off of me