7 ms·

Fuse – Write cross platform native apps using C# and JavaScript

75 points by dementrock 11y ago

davrosthedalek 11y ago
Please don't name it Fuse. Yes, it's a good name, but there is already a rather well known project with that name, plus it's a common household item. You make it unnecessary hard to be found and not con-fuse-d (hah!) by users. I speak from experience: I often have to look up errors/bugs related to root. Root as in "CERN analysis software", not the user. One of the most annoying names ever. (In that sense it's rather fitting)
- endlessvoid94 11y ago
  Agreed. I read the title and thought there was some cool new FUSE C# library.
- seany 11y ago
  Corona Labs ( A cross platform sdk ) merged with Fuse Powered in Nov 2014. Just to make this even more confusing.
- CmonDev 11y ago
  That's not the worst case, how about this: https://www.terraform.io https://www.terraform.io No relation to making planets habitable whatsoever.
- hbbio 11y ago
  Exactly. While reading the title, I thought... what a good idea. But what I had in mind, was to use FUSE (Filesystem in USEr space) to locally mount a webservice/API and then use C# native GUIs to do the presentation :)
  - olavgg 11y ago
    That was what I read first too.
  - PopeOfNope 11y ago
    That's interesting, but I'm not sure what FUSE gets you, except maybe not having to fiddle around with streaming the bytecode yourself? I do like the idea of having a compiled bytecode hosted on a server, streaming that to a local C# VM (.NET?) then having the native GUIs do the presentation. :)
- kej 11y ago
  It's interesting that FUSE (the file system library) has a FAQ entry about why they chose the name when there was already a ZX Spectrum emulator named Fuse. Apparently it's name collisions all the way down.
hliyan 11y ago
Feels a lot like Titanium?
- adslcx 11y ago
  Not really. A lot of the efforts of Fuse seem to go into making it easy to build smooth animation and stunning graphics using high level primitives instead of programming GPU directly
  - gloom303 11y ago
    Yeah, that's pretty accurate, there's plenty difference between Fuse and hybrid app solutions / traditional cross-compilation stuff. The people behind Fuse come from GPU design and demoscene backgrounds too, which I would say is a good sign :)
- troymc 11y ago
  At a high level, yes: develop using JavaScript, end up with a true native app, on iOS and Android. See also: NativeScript, Tabris.js, and React Native Edit: If you'd prefer to develop apps using a different programming language, see http://www.mobilechameleon.com/ http://www.mobilechameleon.com/
golergka 11y ago
Javascript, javascript, javascript... So, where's the C#? > Uno, a light-weight, high speed dialect of C#. Ah! Here it is. A light-weight dialect, you say. Similar to Unity3d's old Mono fork that hasn't been updated since .Net 2.5, and still crashes when you attempt to use some of language features (like named parameters)?
- CmonDev 11y ago
  Yes, at least he could reverse the order of words in the subj. The link on the website leads to the API docs - there is no language description. I bet "high-speed" actually means "we removed things we think you don't need". Feels like a Unity3d-inspired afterthought. It does not matter though, the world is moving away from JS. Better support the full C#.
  - louthy 11y ago
    > The world is moving away from JS Which world is this? The world I live in seems to be full speed ahead with JS.
    - pjmlp 11y ago
      The world where the browser is yet another virtual machine using a bytecode format called WebAssembly, with developers having found memories (or not) from the days when JavaScript was the only option.
  - theknarf 11y ago
    Before they where called outracks.com and were making some kind of 3D studio. But apparently they have switched over to working full time on Fuse instead, which is kinda sad as Uno is pretty awesome. I'm guessing documentation is going to come up on their new webpage eventually, I remember them doing a private beta of Uno and the 3d studio thing. I'm wondering if they have given up on the 3d studio thing, or if they are just planning on rebranding it, since it seems they have given up the name outracks.
  - golergka 11y ago
danr4 11y ago
Looks interesting. But I can't seem to find any review of it by actual users.
- gloom303 11y ago
  http://www.simppa.fi/blog/ http://www.simppa.fi/blog/
  - danr4 11y ago
    This a really domain specific example. I meant a post of the "Impressions after 3 months of writing apps in Fuse" sort
amelius 11y ago
Will this be the next Flash (TM)?
amelius 11y ago
Why can't we just write html+css+javascript, and run that on the native platform in an efficient and seamless way? That would seem like a much more welcome approach.
- PopeOfNope 11y ago
  Because html+css was designed for viewing static documents, not unlike Word or PDF. Most of the efficiency problems of the web stem from that fact. The rest stem from the bloat that's required to support every browser in existence from the past 5 years. I still shudder every time I hear the words "this works in ie8, right?" It's like having 5 different Java VMs, each supporting a slightly different undocumented version of the java bytecode spec and then requiring everybody to support all 5 VMs, their quirks and make it all backwards compatible.
- king_magic 11y ago
  > in an efficient and seamless way Because no one has come close to pulling that off yet.
brainburn 11y ago
What the examples need is a link to the Playstore/Itunes so we can see how Fuse behaves on a real device.
mcintyre1994 11y ago
This is really intriguing! What's the relationship between your UX markup language and XAML? Superficially they look similar - DockPanel/ScrollViewer etc (or are these more standardised elsewhere?) - with bindings/triggers being very different, Each being very different. Is yours a superset? Does it implement full xaml layouts? Do you support xaml grids? Do you have an equivalent to xaml namespacing? Is yours actually xml in the xhtml sense or is it looser? Is building a Fuse app anything like building an MVVM WPF app? Are you creating .net objects at any point? Is your c# thing (uno) .net?
- Duckers 11y ago
  Hi, I'm Anders. I work at Fuse :) UX markup is not directly related to XAML, allthough it is based on much of the same principles. UX markup is designed to be much less verbose and more compact. It is not very strict Xml, it prefers expressiveness over Xml conformance. Xml namespacing is supported though :) UX with the Fuse libraries offer pretty much the same layouts as xaml, including Grid. Uno is not .NET based at runtime. Uno is translated to C++ and runs as native code with no VM.
  - mcintyre1994 11y ago
    Hey, thanks for replying! This all sounds pretty cool and I think you made the right choice regarding UX markup :)
knocte 11y ago
Some brief questions: * Will you open-source Uno? * Will you have a freemium model? (Free for opensource apps.) * Will you change the name like others have suggested? * Will you consider a no-JS model to develop? If all of the answers are YES to the above, then please sign me up for the beta.
- Duckers 11y ago
  * Will you open-source Uno? Very likely - but details/license TBA. * Will you have a freemium model? (Free for opensource apps.) Yes, there will always be a free way of using Fuse and Uno. * Will you change the name like others have suggested? No :) * Will you consider a no-JS model to develop? Yup. We have that already. You can use Fuse with just Uno if you like, JS is an optional component. However, our main focus is on creating a very rapid and streamlined development workflow with UX+JS. Best regards, Anders from Fuse
  - dementrock 11y ago
    OP here - I don't work for Fuse and I've got a related question. Will the Fuse libraries be open-sourced too?
    - Duckers 11y ago
      They are already provided in source to those with access to the beta, so yeah :) Again, license TBD.
  - WorldWideWayne 11y ago
    Oh really, you're not going to change the name because 3 people on HN suggested it? Good on you :) I doubt it will make a real difference to anyone that wants to use it. If Google can name a language Go, then you can name your product Fuse.
    - nadams 11y ago
      > Oh really, you're not going to change the name because 3 people on HN suggested it? I'm sure the people behind FUSE file system library might have some comments to add. I would never name my product after a major open source project. Like as if I created something and called it Blender or Pencil.
hknd 11y ago
Would be nice to get the beta invites soon
_cbb1 11y ago
this looks awesome!

75 points by dementrock 11y ago

Please don't name it Fuse. Yes, it's a good name, but there is already a rather well known project with that name, plus it's a common household item. You make it unnecessary hard to be found and not con-fuse-d (hah!) by users. I speak from experience: I often have to look up errors/bugs related to root. Root as in "CERN analysis software", not the user. One of the most annoying names ever. (In that sense it's rather fitting)

endlessvoid94 11y ago
Agreed. I read the title and thought there was some cool new FUSE C# library.
seany 11y ago
Corona Labs ( A cross platform sdk ) merged with Fuse Powered in Nov 2014. Just to make this even more confusing.
CmonDev 11y ago
That's not the worst case, how about this: https://www.terraform.io https://www.terraform.io No relation to making planets habitable whatsoever.
hbbio 11y ago
Exactly. While reading the title, I thought... what a good idea. But what I had in mind, was to use FUSE (Filesystem in USEr space) to locally mount a webservice/API and then use C# native GUIs to do the presentation :)
- olavgg 11y ago
  That was what I read first too.
- PopeOfNope 11y ago
  That's interesting, but I'm not sure what FUSE gets you, except maybe not having to fiddle around with streaming the bytecode yourself? I do like the idea of having a compiled bytecode hosted on a server, streaming that to a local C# VM (.NET?) then having the native GUIs do the presentation. :)
kej 11y ago
It's interesting that FUSE (the file system library) has a FAQ entry about why they chose the name when there was already a ZX Spectrum emulator named Fuse. Apparently it's name collisions all the way down.

hliyan 11y ago

Feels a lot like Titanium?

adslcx 11y ago
Not really. A lot of the efforts of Fuse seem to go into making it easy to build smooth animation and stunning graphics using high level primitives instead of programming GPU directly
- gloom303 11y ago
  Yeah, that's pretty accurate, there's plenty difference between Fuse and hybrid app solutions / traditional cross-compilation stuff. The people behind Fuse come from GPU design and demoscene backgrounds too, which I would say is a good sign :)
troymc 11y ago
At a high level, yes: develop using JavaScript, end up with a true native app, on iOS and Android. See also: NativeScript, Tabris.js, and React Native Edit: If you'd prefer to develop apps using a different programming language, see http://www.mobilechameleon.com/ http://www.mobilechameleon.com/

golergka 11y ago

Javascript, javascript, javascript... So, where's the C#? > Uno, a light-weight, high speed dialect of C#. Ah! Here it is. A light-weight dialect, you say. Similar to Unity3d's old Mono fork that hasn't been updated since .Net 2.5, and still crashes when you attempt to use some of language features (like named parameters)?

CmonDev 11y ago
Yes, at least he could reverse the order of words in the subj. The link on the website leads to the API docs - there is no language description. I bet "high-speed" actually means "we removed things we think you don't need". Feels like a Unity3d-inspired afterthought. It does not matter though, the world is moving away from JS. Better support the full C#.
- louthy 11y ago
  > The world is moving away from JS Which world is this? The world I live in seems to be full speed ahead with JS.
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    The world where the browser is yet another virtual machine using a bytecode format called WebAssembly, with developers having found memories (or not) from the days when JavaScript was the only option.
- theknarf 11y ago
  Before they where called outracks.com and were making some kind of 3D studio. But apparently they have switched over to working full time on Fuse instead, which is kinda sad as Uno is pretty awesome. I'm guessing documentation is going to come up on their new webpage eventually, I remember them doing a private beta of Uno and the 3d studio thing. I'm wondering if they have given up on the 3d studio thing, or if they are just planning on rebranding it, since it seems they have given up the name outracks.
- golergka 11y ago

danr4 11y ago

Looks interesting. But I can't seem to find any review of it by actual users.

gloom303 11y ago
http://www.simppa.fi/blog/ http://www.simppa.fi/blog/
- danr4 11y ago
  This a really domain specific example. I meant a post of the "Impressions after 3 months of writing apps in Fuse" sort

amelius 11y ago

Will this be the next Flash (TM)?

amelius 11y ago

Why can't we just write html+css+javascript, and run that on the native platform in an efficient and seamless way? That would seem like a much more welcome approach.

PopeOfNope 11y ago
Because html+css was designed for viewing static documents, not unlike Word or PDF. Most of the efficiency problems of the web stem from that fact. The rest stem from the bloat that's required to support every browser in existence from the past 5 years. I still shudder every time I hear the words "this works in ie8, right?" It's like having 5 different Java VMs, each supporting a slightly different undocumented version of the java bytecode spec and then requiring everybody to support all 5 VMs, their quirks and make it all backwards compatible.
king_magic 11y ago
> in an efficient and seamless way Because no one has come close to pulling that off yet.

brainburn 11y ago

What the examples need is a link to the Playstore/Itunes so we can see how Fuse behaves on a real device.

mcintyre1994 11y ago

This is really intriguing! What's the relationship between your UX markup language and XAML? Superficially they look similar - DockPanel/ScrollViewer etc (or are these more standardised elsewhere?) - with bindings/triggers being very different, Each being very different. Is yours a superset? Does it implement full xaml layouts? Do you support xaml grids? Do you have an equivalent to xaml namespacing? Is yours actually xml in the xhtml sense or is it looser? Is building a Fuse app anything like building an MVVM WPF app? Are you creating .net objects at any point? Is your c# thing (uno) .net?

Duckers 11y ago
Hi, I'm Anders. I work at Fuse :) UX markup is not directly related to XAML, allthough it is based on much of the same principles. UX markup is designed to be much less verbose and more compact. It is not very strict Xml, it prefers expressiveness over Xml conformance. Xml namespacing is supported though :) UX with the Fuse libraries offer pretty much the same layouts as xaml, including Grid. Uno is not .NET based at runtime. Uno is translated to C++ and runs as native code with no VM.
- mcintyre1994 11y ago
  Hey, thanks for replying! This all sounds pretty cool and I think you made the right choice regarding UX markup :)

knocte 11y ago

Some brief questions: * Will you open-source Uno? * Will you have a freemium model? (Free for opensource apps.) * Will you change the name like others have suggested? * Will you consider a no-JS model to develop? If all of the answers are YES to the above, then please sign me up for the beta.

Duckers 11y ago
* Will you open-source Uno? Very likely - but details/license TBA. * Will you have a freemium model? (Free for opensource apps.) Yes, there will always be a free way of using Fuse and Uno. * Will you change the name like others have suggested? No :) * Will you consider a no-JS model to develop? Yup. We have that already. You can use Fuse with just Uno if you like, JS is an optional component. However, our main focus is on creating a very rapid and streamlined development workflow with UX+JS. Best regards, Anders from Fuse
- dementrock 11y ago
  OP here - I don't work for Fuse and I've got a related question. Will the Fuse libraries be open-sourced too?
  - Duckers 11y ago
    They are already provided in source to those with access to the beta, so yeah :) Again, license TBD.
- WorldWideWayne 11y ago
  Oh really, you're not going to change the name because 3 people on HN suggested it? Good on you :) I doubt it will make a real difference to anyone that wants to use it. If Google can name a language Go, then you can name your product Fuse.
  - nadams 11y ago
    > Oh really, you're not going to change the name because 3 people on HN suggested it? I'm sure the people behind FUSE file system library might have some comments to add. I would never name my product after a major open source project. Like as if I created something and called it Blender or Pencil.

hknd 11y ago

Would be nice to get the beta invites soon

_cbb1 11y ago

this looks awesome!