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Inspecting Web Views in macOS

blog.jim-nielsen.com

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Re: Inspecting Web Views in macOS

#31

Post by knome »

ketzo wrote: post #18
johnfn wrote: post #10

Wow. I always thought the argument in favor of using web technologies on the desktop was that cross-platform became easier. And yet here is an example of the most unambiguously single-platform app I can possibly imagine, and under the hood it uses web - and React of all things! Crazy.

As it turns out, React / CSS / the document-object-model are popular for more reasons than “it works on different computers.” Who knew!

I expect these additional reasons can largely be summed up as "I already know it from using it in the browser, so let's use that"

Re: Inspecting Web Views in macOS

#32

Post by InTheArena »

Quick. Hide the evidence so the ATP purists can still insist on ideological purity and in the one true belief that the only way to write Mac Applications is to do everything in Swift or Objective-C.

After all, If Apple does it....

Re: Inspecting Web Views in macOS

#33

Post by boogies »

Source-available variants of [GNU's Not] Unix have often been on the leading edge of user interfaces, from immitating the Xerox PARC desktop metaphor before Windows did (X11 initial release: June 1984, Windows: November 1985) to adding intrusive ads to the main system menu / search around the time Windows 8 was released. But it’s interesting to see macOS’s proprietary UI now apparently following GNOME’s example of powering “native” interfaces with JavaScript.

Edit: apparently this is actually more similar to Windows, which also uses React for system settings. All this DE stuff is too complicated for a simple person like me (I just use dwm on desktop and mobile).

Re: Inspecting Web Views in macOS

#34

Post by userbinator »

eropple wrote: post #23
userbinator wrote: post #12

This might explain why, although I'm not a constant user of Mac, whenever I've had to use it, the UI has felt a little (and in the newer versions, significantly) more sluggish than Windows on the same hardware. It's not hard to see how someone accustomed to that level of responsiveness could find Electron not too different from a "native" app that's actually doing much the same thing.

It's like three webviews in the system preferences app. So probably not.

That's exactly my point. If the true native apps are just as slow as the web ones, the latter don't seem any different, and thus, Electron apps too.

Re: Inspecting Web Views in macOS

#35

Post by dymk »

knome wrote: post #31
ketzo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As it turns out, React / CSS / the document-object-model are popular for more reasons than “it works on different computers.” Who knew!

I expect these additional reasons can largely be summed up as "I already know it from using it in the browser, so let's use that"

You'd probably be wrong!

Let me introduce you to https://github.com/ocornut/imgui

Re: Inspecting Web Views in macOS

#37

Post by lelandfe »

neximo64 wrote: post #26

That explains how looking at your iCloud preferences are near the most unreliable and slow part of settings. Even more so the Apple engineers never consider someone could live outside the US.

And non-conformant UI, as well. It's like the HIG just doesn't exist anymore. Scroll up inside the Family Sharing family table. Does the interior of the table have an elastic scroll? NO! The entire Family Sharing pane instead scrolls up.

Ditto for the Details sheet. That one also doesn't honor the system-wide feature of navigating prompts with Cmd-(first letter of buttons), doesn't support Esc to leave, and doesn't have a default button to boot.

The +/- icons that appear in the Family Sharing are also completely unique to the OS. Ugh. I could go on.

Re: Inspecting Web Views in macOS

#38

Post by __del__ »

ketzo wrote: post #18
johnfn wrote: post #10

Wow. I always thought the argument in favor of using web technologies on the desktop was that cross-platform became easier. And yet here is an example of the most unambiguously single-platform app I can possibly imagine, and under the hood it uses web - and React of all things! Crazy.

As it turns out, React / CSS / the document-object-model are popular for more reasons than “it works on different computers.” Who knew!

who knew? it sneaked up on us.

we spent decades wedging compatibility shims into gaping functionality holes, while heroic visionaries of the web as a platform toiled and bargained to bring us the tools we needed for modularity, performance, and a modicum of basic platform services.

all while making sure continued to work.

Re: Inspecting Web Views in macOS

#39

Post by firecall »

neximo64 wrote: post #26

That explains how looking at your iCloud preferences are near the most unreliable and slow part of settings. Even more so the Apple engineers never consider someone could live outside the US.

100%.

It's the worst.

The glacially slow UI performance is terrible. It's also unreliable in weird ways that are hard to explain in a sentence or two.

Re: Inspecting Web Views in macOS

#40

Post by lelandfe »

woodruffw wrote: post #9
efortis wrote: post #2

Awesome! Do you know more Web Views in use?

Don't quote me on this, but I believe that Apple Music (nee iTunes) has used web views for a long time; probably over a decade. The entire thing probably isn't a web view, but my recollection is that the store components were.

Unsurprisingly the App Store is another example.
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