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Electron.Net: Build cross platform desktop apps using .NET core and ASP.NET core

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Re: Electron.Net: Build cross platform desktop apps using .NET core and ASP.NET core

#81

Post by [deleted] »

j_s wrote: post #74
yoodenvranx wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can't we just make a proper, easy to use portable desktop application framework please? We should just go back to Delphi, it was/is one of the best ways of doing GUIs.

The usual problem is that the various cross-platform UI toolkits not only fall into the uncanny valley but also only support one programming language best (in this case, Pascal). Only the incentives of the biggest cross-platform browser vendors align in such a way that they pursue native UI effectively. Recent discussion: Why I use Object Pascal | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15490345 (2017Oct:268points,233co…

[deleted]

Re: Electron.Net: Build cross platform desktop apps using .NET core and ASP.NET core

#82

Post by matthewmacleod »

j_s wrote: post #64
matthewmacleod wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a glib answer, given that literally nobody writes UI code that talks directly to X for obvious reasons.

It was not intended as a glib answer -- can you provide any aspect of the given requirements that are not met by X11? It is an interesting exercise to consider it as an alternative to Electron. "Not hard to use" was not mentioned, but definitely correlates with popularity. Apple and Microsoft do not target it as a business decision, but X11 is available on both of these platforms with commercial support. > nobody wri…

Right, I actually have to apologise for my previous comment – I misread the parent and read 'UI framework' instead of 'UI subsystem'.

You're right that X is actually suitable of the use-case as described, though that use-case itself is faulty.

Re: Electron.Net: Build cross platform desktop apps using .NET core and ASP.NET core

#83

Post by j_s »

hacker_9 wrote: post #56
cm2187 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. To me the solution will be webassembly. I entertain the hope that there will be a .net runtime for webassembly, in which case you will be able to write a full cross platform application without having to write a line of JavaScript. Won’t be XAML+.net but will be HTML+.net.

DOM interaction and Garbage Collectors are still a heavy research topic within the WebAssembly community, and aren't part of the MVP [1]. Plus MS would need to create a custom C# -> WASM compiler as they don't use LLVM internally. All this means you are probably going to be waiting at least another 5 years before you can compile .Net GUI apps straight to the web. [1] http://webassembly.org/docs/future-features/

> C# -> WASM compiler

https://github.com/kg/ilwasm/ [2015]

Unfortunately, more proof of concept than anything

Re: Electron.Net: Build cross platform desktop apps using .NET core and ASP.NET core

#84

Post by cm2187 »

pjmlp wrote: post #77
cm2187 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's even worse than that. It makes apps expensive and slower to develop across platforms, makes different version more complicated to maintain and keep in sync, creates more attack surface, etc. And even from a non technical point of view, there is a consistency of experience across platforms point of view. There are very good reasons to have fully cross platform apps that you develop only once. And in general, I do…

I rather have a portable application that takes advantage of the best features on each platform that it runs, than the minimum common denomitor that is the web. Ergo developers taking the easy route to the expense of user's overall UI/UX. Thankfully all web based mobile OSes bombed so far.

I totally agree that html+javascript isn't a good answer to cross platform (for the reasons you mention, and because of javascript's own merits). But the ability to develop an app once and run it on multiple platforms is long overdue. And any effort in that direction is welcome. Having to learn 10 different languages and UI frameworks isn't a solution.

Re: Electron.Net: Build cross platform desktop apps using .NET core and ASP.NET core

#85

Post by Narretz »

lwansbrough wrote: post #20

I think this highlights the need for Microsoft to open source Edge’s new rendering engine. I’d love to be able to use the renderer in .NET Core for a whole host of applications (including rendering dynamic HTML to OpenGL) but unfortunately EdgeHTML has remained closed source! With many components of the .NET stack being open sourced, and even some of the Edge stack, I had high hopes for seeing the rendering engine op…

I assume EdgeHTML isn't open source because it isn't fully new like Chakra. For example, the first Edge versions had the same select box rendering bugs as Internet Explorer 11 had.

Re: Electron.Net: Build cross platform desktop apps using .NET core and ASP.NET core

#86

Post by j_s »

lwansbrough wrote: post #76
j_s wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was not intended as a glib answer -- can you provide any aspect of the given requirements that are not met by X11? It is an interesting exercise to consider it as an alternative to Electron. "Not hard to use" was not mentioned, but definitely correlates with popularity. Apple and Microsoft do not target it as a business decision, but X11 is available on both of these platforms with commercial support. > nobody wri…

The trouble is not in finding a solution that works on desktops for Linux, macOS and Windows -- we have that already 10 times over. What is needed is a protocol which can be targeted by the average JS UI framework creator. It needs to be fairly light weight, and exist mostly as a layer below any sort of framework. If that's X11, so be it, but I haven't seen it running in a browser before. One such use case would be a…

> native UI driven by React + JS.

https://github.com/Microsoft/react-native-windows

Watching how Microsoft manages this project may give an additional insight into how ideas you are suggesting would fare. (It doesn't seem to be a tire fire or anything from initial impressions.)

Re: Electron.Net: Build cross platform desktop apps using .NET core and ASP.NET core

#87

Post by j_s »

jcelerier wrote: post #24
alkonaut wrote: post #21

Can't we just make a proper, easy to use portable desktop application framework please? I really don't care what language is used so log as JS is avoidable (It can still be a compilation target so it could even be JS), and I can make a snappy desktop app that takes 10 not 100mb. I'm not even sure which one I'm hoping for at the moment. Xamarin seems to have bet fully on mobile. Avalonia looks nice but feels like it w…

> Can't we just make a proper, easy to use portable desktop application framework please? Qt ticks all your marks (though the "easy" part is through QML which is a superset of JS), + mobile, (+ one day web maybe https://msorvig.github.io/qt-webassembly-examples/window_ope... though that's fairly experimental).

A cross-platform UI toolkit with a stable history of commercially support seems to be the most reliable foundation to build on, for sure!

Re: Electron.Net: Build cross platform desktop apps using .NET core and ASP.NET core

#88

Post by j_s »

nicoburns wrote: post #37
alkonaut wrote: post #21

Can't we just make a proper, easy to use portable desktop application framework please? I really don't care what language is used so log as JS is avoidable (It can still be a compilation target so it could even be JS), and I can make a snappy desktop app that takes 10 not 100mb. I'm not even sure which one I'm hoping for at the moment. Xamarin seems to have bet fully on mobile. Avalonia looks nice but feels like it w…

There's some promising early stage projects in Rust world. They're all building on WebRender (firefox's new renderer), but without the DOM/JavaScript bit.

Golang led me to this popular lightweight C library: https://github.com/andlabs/libui

Re: Electron.Net: Build cross platform desktop apps using .NET core and ASP.NET core

#89

Post by manilafolder »

lwansbrough wrote: post #20

I think this highlights the need for Microsoft to open source Edge’s new rendering engine. I’d love to be able to use the renderer in .NET Core for a whole host of applications (including rendering dynamic HTML to OpenGL) but unfortunately EdgeHTML has remained closed source! With many components of the .NET stack being open sourced, and even some of the Edge stack, I had high hopes for seeing the rendering engine op…

Regarding native cross-platform UI frameworks, isn't this what Xwt is supposed to be (https://github.com/mono/xwt)? There's no XAML non-sense and it's an object-oriented approach to building your UI, similar to Windows.Forms.

The primary benefit to it over something browser-based is start-up time. Since it's ultimately using native assemblies and there's no web server that needs to be spun up causing start-time lag.

Is anyone using Xwt? The NuGet packages for it are up-to-date (but don't have very many downloads), and the official forum for it seems very dead.

Re: Electron.Net: Build cross platform desktop apps using .NET core and ASP.NET core

#90

Post by j_s »

manilafolder wrote: post #89
lwansbrough wrote: post #20

I think this highlights the need for Microsoft to open source Edge’s new rendering engine. I’d love to be able to use the renderer in .NET Core for a whole host of applications (including rendering dynamic HTML to OpenGL) but unfortunately EdgeHTML has remained closed source! With many components of the .NET stack being open sourced, and even some of the Edge stack, I had high hopes for seeing the rendering engine op…

Regarding native cross-platform UI frameworks, isn't this what Xwt is supposed to be ( https://github.com/mono/xwt )? There's no XAML non-sense and it's an object-oriented approach to building your UI, similar to Windows.Forms. The primary benefit to it over something browser-based is start-up time. Since it's ultimately using native assemblies and there's no web server that needs to be spun up causing start-time lag…

Maybe non-Xamarin-employee interest has declined sine the announcement of Xamarin Forms coming to the desktop?

https://blog.xamarin.com/glimpse-future-xamarin-forms-3-0/ (2017May)

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