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Ask HN: How to make a native GUI with a modern language?

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Re: Ask HN: How to make a native GUI with a modern language?

#91

Post by WorldMaker »

zerr wrote: post #89
WorldMaker wrote: post #79

MAUI in .NET 7 checks many of the boxes you have here: - Native looking: MAUI supports native controls as much as possible - Cross platform: Nearly everything but Linux today (and there are forks out there trying to bridge that gap); macOS (Catalyst), Windows, iOS, and Android - C# as the default .NET option is a very sane language. Other options may be possible with more effort. (Some people are still working on tha…

It doesn't support the second most popular OS (Win7) which still holds the quarter of the market share.

If you find yourself needing to support an OS that ended security support in Jan 2020, you can easily share 95%+ of your C# business logic between MAUI and a WPF app.

Re: Ask HN: How to make a native GUI with a modern language?

#92

Post by threesmegiste »

desireco42 wrote: post #51

Strange nobody mentioned Tauri, it is really pleasant experience to use and good solution. It works really well for what it does, it is still not covering all features and everything, but it is more performant and more secure alternative to Electron. I was considering using it for some app that otherwise would be PWA. While I didn't use in-depth features and didn't run into any serious problems, it is likely that not…

really only alternative.

Re: Ask HN: How to make a native GUI with a modern language?

#93

Post by Ancapistani »

Gentil wrote: post #66

Curious why Kivy framework which uses Python is not even mentioned. Is there something that I should be worried about? I am planning to learn Kivy soon.

Well, that set me on a side track :). I thought I'd share my experience here.

I've looked at Kivy in the past, but it didn't seem mature enough to rely on, especially for deploying to iOS/iPadOS. I just spent a couple of hours going through their documentation, building their example "Pong" app, and deploying it to macOS, iPadOS, and Android. All went off without a hitch, though I didn't mess with signing or trying to release them to the various app stores.

I'm going to say Kivy is more than capable of the things I'd want it to do. Looks like the roguelike I've had in my head may make it onto the screen in the near future!

Re: Ask HN: How to make a native GUI with a modern language?

#94

Post by dexterlagan »

If money is no object, Xojo fits the bill. Native UI, cross-platform Win/Linux/MacOS/iOS/Web and soon Android. Simple language, LLVM performance and lots of libraries.

In the free world, I'd say Racket is the next best thing. Native UI, runs on anything. But you have to fall in love with Scheme. It's easy for me, I'm already sold.

I haven't found anything else that a) doesn't break in production, or 2) turns out to be a giant pain in the.

Re: Ask HN: How to make a native GUI with a modern language?

#95

Post by bpye »

ceronman wrote: post #48

Having a native looking GUI and being cross platform is almost contradictory. The only way to make truly native looking and feeling GUIs is to use native tools. That means Cocoa on macOS, Gtk or Qt on Linux, and Win32/Winforms/WPF/WinUI on Windows. Most cross platform frameworks won't really look 100% native. The only exception I know is wxWidgets, which provides an abstraction layer over the native toolkits. It's wr…

> More important than native looking is to have a GUI that is fast, efficient and accesible. The best option that provides this in a cross platform way is QT. Java Swing and JavaFX are also good options.

I would echo this. Consider applications like Photoshop or Blender, these don't really have a 'native' feel anywhere but their UX is generally responsive. On the other hand you have Electron applications that don't feel native and are also sluggish...

Re: Ask HN: How to make a native GUI with a modern language?

#97

Post by snehesht »

I suggest to take a look at tauri[1], lorca[2](requires chrome to be installed) or webview[3](uses system webkit). If you're interested I made a small poc that can be shipped as a single binary file with webview and react - https://github.com/snehesht/goview

1. https://github.com/tauri-apps/tauri 2. https://github.com/zserge/lorca 3. https://github.com/webview/webview

Re: Ask HN: How to make a native GUI with a modern language?

#98

Post by sethjr5rtfgh »

socialdemocrat wrote: post #47

I write native GUIs in GTK using Julia at the moment. Julia is one of the most modern languages you can use today. Multiple-dispatch, very functional, modern package management and virtual environments, high performance, modern sophisticated REPL environment. GTK is quite nice as Glade is one of the nicer GUI designers. Here is a simple Julia GTK project on GitHub: https://github.com/ordovician/RocketBuilder.jl Some…

No post body was provided.

Re: Ask HN: How to make a native GUI with a modern language?

#99

Post by marwis »

ceronman wrote: post #48

Having a native looking GUI and being cross platform is almost contradictory. The only way to make truly native looking and feeling GUIs is to use native tools. That means Cocoa on macOS, Gtk or Qt on Linux, and Win32/Winforms/WPF/WinUI on Windows. Most cross platform frameworks won't really look 100% native. The only exception I know is wxWidgets, which provides an abstraction layer over the native toolkits. It's wr…

Besides wxWidgets there's also SWT for Java which also wraps native widgets.

Re: Ask HN: How to make a native GUI with a modern language?

#100

Post by d--b »

socialdemocrat wrote: post #53

One unusual alternative you may not have thought about is using Godot Game Engine. Before dismissing it, consider this: Godot engine is shockingly small for what it does. The download is about 30-40 MB. The GUI designer tool is second to none, and you can make highly interactive advanced GUIs using a language that looks very much like Python called GDScript. It is very quick to learn. It does make GUI which are nativ…

I really wanted to try this out, but the learning curve for godot was a little steep, cause there is all the game related stuff I don’t really care about. Any tutorial to create a simple app with a few controls?
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