Ask HN: Time to give up on Qt? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Time to give up on Qt?

#31

Post by paulhodge » Mon, Jul 09, 2012, 8:01 AM UTC

patrickaljord wrote: post #2

Go nativeclient+html5. Best of both worlds. You could still distribute it as a standalone app like https://github.com/adobe/brackets/

That's more like the worst of both worlds, going through the NaCl API is a pain, and debugging a NaCl app is much trickier than usual. It's a ton of work for little benefit, compared to just using Qt.

Re: Ask HN: Time to give up on Qt?

#32

Post by silon3 » Mon, Jul 09, 2012, 8:06 AM UTC

I wonder of Qt will lose popularity elsewhere just as many people migrate from Gnome to KDE (I did, at least for the default installation desktop where I don't run alternative WMs).

Re: Ask HN: Time to give up on Qt?

#33

Post by zoobert » Mon, Jul 09, 2012, 8:18 AM UTC

Jarred wrote: post #25

This is something between desktop and web, but you could use Chromium Embedded ( http://code.google.com/p/chromiumembedded/ ). It uses GTK+ on Linux, Cocoa on Mac OS X, and it's own library on Windows (but it looks identical to Windows' UI elements).

@Jarred. Thanks for sharing about the CEF project. I need to build a cross-platform GUI in Python if possible and wanted to use wxWidgets with the python binding. Now CEF seems really great: The possibility to make an HTML5-Javascript App and having also the opportunity to deploy it on a web-server is really exiting. I will have to evaluate it, seems really cool. Can you access files on the file system as a normal native application or do you have to write in a dedicated sandboxed area ?

Re: Ask HN: Time to give up on Qt?

#34

Post by jakubw » Mon, Jul 09, 2012, 8:25 AM UTC

djcapelis wrote: post #28

mseepgood wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use toolkits like Extjs, which provide a rich palette of widgets and hide away incompatibilities. http://www.sencha.com/products/extjs/

You realize the Qt basically does exactly that for non-web apps except it's far more comprehensive and tested, right?

The difference is that each environment for non-Web apps - Mac, Windows, KDE etc - has each own somewhat well defined look and feel, that applications should follow in order to feel native. That's not true for Web apps in different Web browsers - they are supposed to look the same. Qt compromises that native experience by letting you target multiple platforms. For Web toolkits, at worst you'll end up with an app that doesn't stand out (e.g. by using Bootstrap) but certainly not with one that won't blend in.

Re: Ask HN: Time to give up on Qt?

#35

Post by kimmel » Mon, Jul 09, 2012, 8:30 AM UTC

> Something else? GTK+ still doesn't look very native on Windows or OS X, so for many cross-platform apps it's not a viable option.

GTK+ can look just like Windows XP, Windows 7, Mac OS X. It has themeing capability.

Re: Ask HN: Time to give up on Qt?

#36

Post by vlisivka » Mon, Jul 09, 2012, 8:35 AM UTC

mseepgood wrote: post #23

pjmlp wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only viable cross-platform is the web. Yeah with its mixture of CSS/HTML/JavaScript crap that works perfectly across all browsers versions and operating systems.

Use toolkits like Extjs, which provide a rich palette of widgets and hide away incompatibilities. http://www.sencha.com/products/extjs/

Extjs does not look and feel like native apps, nor like regular web page.

Re: Ask HN: Time to give up on Qt?

#37

Post by smeg » Mon, Jul 09, 2012, 8:38 AM UTC

If your looking for a powerful canvas feature, qt is really your only choice. That's what swung me away from gtk and wx.

Re: Ask HN: Time to give up on Qt?

#38

Post by haakon » Mon, Jul 09, 2012, 8:50 AM UTC

For some perspective, the KDE project posted this today: http://dot.kde.org/2012/07/09/kde-rely-qt-protect-qts-freedo...

Re: Ask HN: Time to give up on Qt?

#39

Post by pjmlp » Mon, Jul 09, 2012, 8:57 AM UTC

taligent wrote: post #27

pjmlp wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only viable cross-platform is the web. Yeah with its mixture of CSS/HTML/JavaScript crap that works perfectly across all browsers versions and operating systems.

If the problems with that "crap" were insurmountable we wouldn't have the huge variety of websites like we do today. And I would argue that just as big cross platform issues exist with Qt/Swing. With Modernizr, JQuery etc you can get 95+% of the features on 95+% of computers.

> If the problems with that "crap" were insurmountable we wouldn't have the huge variety of websites like we do today

We have them, because many people today don't know how to program in programming languages tailored for desktop development.

The interest in something like node.js is a proof of it.

Re: Ask HN: Time to give up on Qt?

#40

Post by pjmlp » Mon, Jul 09, 2012, 8:58 AM UTC

djcapelis wrote: post #28

mseepgood wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use toolkits like Extjs, which provide a rich palette of widgets and hide away incompatibilities. http://www.sencha.com/products/extjs/

You realize the Qt basically does exactly that for non-web apps except it's far more comprehensive and tested, right?

With proper operating system integration.