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Sciter – Multiplatform HTML/CSS UI Engine for Desktop and Mobile Applications

sciter.com

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Re: Sciter – Multiplatform HTML/CSS UI Engine for Desktop and Mobile Applications

#51

Post by c-smile »

adev_ wrote: post #11

Does anyone know if there is any plan to port that on Mobile ( iOs / Android ) ? That would be a killer feature. Even if I am not sure it would be even legal to port that to iOS with Apple's restrictions on the Web Engines they accept in the Store.

It works on Android: https://sciter.com/sciter-lite-is-published/ and I have internal builds for iOS.

For the moment it is available only as a static lib to be linked into an application.

I am trying to come up with a runtime model that will allow to build applications as simple as

> sciter-build /ui/res/folder -platform="xxx"

Re: Sciter – Multiplatform HTML/CSS UI Engine for Desktop and Mobile Applications

#52

Post by paulryanrogers »

c-smile wrote: post #48

Sciter's author here. Couple of words about "native UI" and on statements like: "I (a hard-core software developer) prefer gray boxes". You (as a software developer), is one of 1% of UI users. But rest of us (99%, sic!) consume UI in form of Web sites, right? So "Native UI" these days shall look closer to default Bootstrap theme then to something that OS provides. My wife (as an example) has Windows notebook, iPhone…

Native to the platform is the common meaning on HN. Native to users is a good point, though orthogonal to reasons HN users may prefer platform-native: lower memory and CPU usage, platform style, familiar shortcuts and behavior.

Re: Sciter – Multiplatform HTML/CSS UI Engine for Desktop and Mobile Applications

#53

Post by [deleted] »

c-smile wrote: post #46
cosmotic wrote: post #5

HTML/CSS based native interfaces are some of the hardest to use, least reliable, least accessible, least robust interfaces I encounter; The demo interfaces on their website all fit into the unusable pot. I admit most/all of the interfaces I've personal used are using electron/webkit/ie to render which are all quite bloated. Is this different? It's not entirely clear and would be an important differentiator. I still d…

Sciter's author here. > HTML/CSS based native interfaces are some of the hardest to use, least reliable, least accessible, least robust interfaces I encounter This has nothing with HTML/CSS per se but rather questions to particular products. Same complain may apply to any UI. > The best native apps look and behave natively; "Native app" term these days is something almost non existent. In these terms Microsoft Office…

[deleted]

Re: Sciter – Multiplatform HTML/CSS UI Engine for Desktop and Mobile Applications

#54

Post by c-smile »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #32

> Various GUI frameworks offer different UI declaration and styling languages, such as QML and XAML (Microsoft WPF). On the contrary, Sciter allows using time proven, robust, and flexible HTML What a remarkable piece of bullshit. QML and XAML have been designed from scratch right for UI mark-up, HTML is a legacy document mark-up language we are doomed to carry on together with gargantuan rendering engines and the who…

Each dinosaur was modern for its time.

And so was XAML. Time is passing and now it takes significant excavation effort to find out a project that uses it. Git-for-desktop used to be a XAML app, now it is an Electron app. And so on.

QML is a palliative or compromise if you wish: let's take existing widget-tree-based UI and add some declarativeness to it at least to compete somehow with the web tech stack flexibility and explosion of ideas. Desperate move I would say.

As an C++ UI developer and then UI architect I was working on one project that transitioned from pure desktop VB + native application to pure Web based app. So "I've been there, seen that" and many times since then, all pro et contra of all these.

At some point I've asked myself the question: "Ok, what would you add to Web UI stack so it will be really useful on desktop?"

So I took C++ again and made the Sciter. It is a modern engine that works as on modern high-res monitors and GPU hardware as on ancient XP machines. It supports as retained UI as immediate ones a la ImGUI. As C++, Go, Rust, Delphi as script. As Angular (data bound UI) and React UI (vDOM,JSX) approaches as classic direct element tree composition from native code.

Yes, all this is using HTML/CSS vocabulary because it is a) convenient and flexible, b) 90% of UI developers are Web developers these days and c) HTML/CSS are here now and for generations to come.

Re: Sciter – Multiplatform HTML/CSS UI Engine for Desktop and Mobile Applications

#55

Post by c-smile »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #52
c-smile wrote: post #48

Sciter's author here. Couple of words about "native UI" and on statements like: "I (a hard-core software developer) prefer gray boxes". You (as a software developer), is one of 1% of UI users. But rest of us (99%, sic!) consume UI in form of Web sites, right? So "Native UI" these days shall look closer to default Bootstrap theme then to something that OS provides. My wife (as an example) has Windows notebook, iPhone…

Native to the platform is the common meaning on HN. Native to users is a good point, though orthogonal to reasons HN users may prefer platform-native: lower memory and CPU usage, platform style, familiar shortcuts and behavior.

> orthogonal to reasons

That's my impression too. I suspect that those "gray boxes" talks (a.k.a. buttons a la turrets of Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger) are orthogonal to GUI in general.

Yet "memory and CPU usage" is also orthogonal to HTML/CSS per se. One of strict requirements of AntiVirus applications is to to consume as low memory and CPU as possible. And most of AVs are using HTML/CSS UI these days. And so Sciter code works on 600 mln PCs and Macs as a part of these applications.

In fact the main motivator why Sciter started using GPU for UI rendering was R&D director of Norton Antivirus when high-res monitors started to arrive. Retina monitors have 9 times more pixels to rasterize than old 96 ppi monitors. GPU is the only option for the GUI at post-Moore era.

Re: Sciter – Multiplatform HTML/CSS UI Engine for Desktop and Mobile Applications

#56

Post by c-smile »

kevingadd wrote: post #21
zerof1l wrote: post #13

My main concern with this would be the security and W3 standard support. Browser engines and whatnot do make your life easy, but they add a lot of attack vectors. Also the support for W3 standard is usually limited and incomplete. Also it seems that the engine itself is distributed as binary only? I can't find source anywhere. That's a -1 for security.

From browsing the docs, it looks like scripts can open sockets so it makes it much easier to jump from exploiting an app's Sciter frontend to attacking other targets

These functions are off by default, check: https://sciter.com/security-in-sciter-based-applications/

Even more, you can compile Sciter without them completely.

Re: Sciter – Multiplatform HTML/CSS UI Engine for Desktop and Mobile Applications

#57

Post by doteka »

xthetrfd wrote: post #17
cosmotic wrote: post #5

HTML/CSS based native interfaces are some of the hardest to use, least reliable, least accessible, least robust interfaces I encounter; The demo interfaces on their website all fit into the unusable pot. I admit most/all of the interfaces I've personal used are using electron/webkit/ie to render which are all quite bloated. Is this different? It's not entirely clear and would be an important differentiator. I still d…

It seems to me at this point that UI/UX developers just refuse to learn low level languages. Qt applications for example are extremely fast and cross platform.

It seems to me that wanting UI developers to learn systems languages is bizarre. We don’t expect Linux kernel developers to learn UI/UX, why would the opposite be the case? They are working on a vastly different abstraction level.

Also, yeah, Qt is indeed fast and cross platform. But somehow every single mainstream Qt application tends to look visually terrible and not any more native than Electron. E.g. Ripcord posted above, or Calibre. Meanwhile, mainstream Electron apps may be hogs in terms of performance, but they look polished.

Finally, Qt’s weird and deceiving licensing is a major reason I would never touch it with a 10 foot pole. I am not a copyright lawyer and have no desire to figure out how I can comply with LGPL, when Electron is MIT.

Re: Sciter – Multiplatform HTML/CSS UI Engine for Desktop and Mobile Applications

#58

Post by c-smile »

sgerenser wrote: post #41
severak_cz wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I had a similar discussion on reddit a long time ago, and posted this screenshot of various Linux music players compared to Spotify. In 90s this was solved by using "skins" which were actually drawn in graphics programs and then spliced and edited in some proprietary editor and/or positioned by hand crafted config file. See https://winampheritage.com/skin for example. You can't go more original than these. :-D I do…

Skins like that don’t scale. Fine if you’re still using a 1366*768 laptop, but even 1080p let alone 4K makes everything tiny or blown up and blurry. Doesn’t mean you need electron to fix it, it can be done with a native UI. But bitmapped skins are generally not used anymore for a reason.

> it can be done with a native UI.

Yes, but with what price?

We (people outside of Microsoft, Apple and Google) cannot afford UIs nailed down to pixel grids and particular trends.

Years ago it was Skeumorphism, then it was flat UI as Metro, today people started speaking about Skeumorphism again. CSS is just a convenient tool to follow the trends.

And "yes" it "doesn’t mean you need electron" as there are other options :)

Take Sciter and forget about UI problems and "resource hogs" for years to come. HTML/CSS will be with us together with the Internet. And so are UI developers that can take care about it. And C++ developers in case you will need to fix something critical inside the Sciter.

Re: Sciter – Multiplatform HTML/CSS UI Engine for Desktop and Mobile Applications

#60

Post by api »

cosmotic wrote: post #5

HTML/CSS based native interfaces are some of the hardest to use, least reliable, least accessible, least robust interfaces I encounter; The demo interfaces on their website all fit into the unusable pot. I admit most/all of the interfaces I've personal used are using electron/webkit/ie to render which are all quite bloated. Is this different? It's not entirely clear and would be an important differentiator. I still d…

VSCode is by far the best Electron app... I mean by miles. It occupies a niche though where people tolerate and even want peculiar user interfaces that are highly optimized for their specific job-- in this case being a code editor and IDE. Electron and other HTML based UIs suck for more normal sorts of apps. They're bloated and look alien and clunky.
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