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Valdi – A cross-platform UI framework that delivers native performance

github.com

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Re: Valdi – A cross-platform UI framework that delivers native performance

#31

Post by dmix »

kridsdale1 wrote: post #17
buffet_overflow wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s been changed since, but wow was it weird finding out that instead of taking photos, the Android app used to essentially take a screenshot of the camera view.

I worked on the camera in Instagram iOS for a while. There at least, there could be a 5,000ms latency delta between the “screen preview” and the actual full quality image asset from the camera DSP in the SOC. I don’t know a thing about Android camera SDK but I can easily see how this choice was the right balance for performance and quality at the time on old hardware (I’m thinking 2013 or so). Users didn’t want the f…

> Users didn’t want the full quality at all, they’d never zoom.

Dating apps use awful quality versions of the photos you upload too. Seems to be good enough for most people.

Re: Valdi – A cross-platform UI framework that delivers native performance

#33

Post by hippo22 »

sans_souse wrote: post #14

So now I can finally implement the most god-awful, ugly, cumbersome and unintuitive GUI methodology ever to face a large population of users into my own apps? This abomination that started the whole user-experience decline by making this kind of yuck the gold standard for apps today is finally open source? Color me yellow.

God forbid someone try something different. The app isn’t really made for people that only know how to doom scroll.

Re: Valdi – A cross-platform UI framework that delivers native performance

#34

Post by adastra22 »

DecoPerson wrote: post #26
bearjaws wrote: post #23

Working at a company that uses react-native I wish nothing more than for the end of app stores and differing platform languages. We're heavily considering just having a website next year with a mobile app using webview, and then native code for the native notifications, GPS and healthkit / health connect. I feel like AI is changing the equation, its nearly better to write your business UI 3 times one for each platfor…

I did this and never looked back. It’s called a “WebView app” and you can get a really good experience on all platforms using them. Just: - don’t make any crazy decisions on your fundamental UI components, like breadcrumbs, select dropdowns, etc - add a few platform-specific specialisations to those same components, to make them feel a bit more familiar, such as button styling, or using a self-simplifying back-stack…

I have never once experienced a WebView app that I would say had “a really good experience.”

Re: Valdi – A cross-platform UI framework that delivers native performance

#35

Post by adastra22 »

samtheprogram wrote: post #25
instagary wrote: post #22

I wish the native iOS part was written in Swift rather than Objective-C like RN.

Why though? You aren’t interacting with it. What difference does it make?

How are you not interacting with it? It’s a UI library, no?

Re: Valdi – A cross-platform UI framework that delivers native performance

#38

Post by greysonp »

buffet_overflow wrote: post #13
mholm wrote: post #5

I’m not sure I trust snap of all companies to make a good cross platform framework after how terrible their android app has been.

I think it’s been changed since, but wow was it weird finding out that instead of taking photos, the Android app used to essentially take a screenshot of the camera view.

I worked on the Snapchat Android back in 2017. It's only weird for people who have never had to work with cameras on Android :) Google's done their best to wrangle things with CameraX, but there's basically a bajillion phones out there with different performance and quality characteristics. And Snap is (rightfully) hyper-fixated on the ability to open the app and take a picture as quickly as possible. The trade off they made was a reasonable one at the time.

Re: Valdi – A cross-platform UI framework that delivers native performance

#39

Post by rTX5CMRXIfFG »

bearjaws wrote: post #23

Working at a company that uses react-native I wish nothing more than for the end of app stores and differing platform languages. We're heavily considering just having a website next year with a mobile app using webview, and then native code for the native notifications, GPS and healthkit / health connect. I feel like AI is changing the equation, its nearly better to write your business UI 3 times one for each platfor…

I personally have a preference for Apple's native frameworks. From a purely engineering standpoint, they're very well thought out and have very clear separations of concerns. Spending my time with their libraries helped me write good, scalable code for platforms beyond their own.

That said, platform lock-in is bad for business because it makes operations dependent on a single provider, but I have no delusions that a web front-end is better.

From an engineering standpoint, front-end web frameworks are less complete and require too many third-party libraries and tooling to assemble. From a UX standpoint, it's actually worse--almost every website you visit today spams you upfront with Google sign-in and invasive cookie permission requests that you can't refuse. But never mind that--from a purely business standpoint, a single platform accessible anywhere saves costs. Most importantly, however, the web is a "safe space" for deploying software anti-patterns without an intermediary entity (i.e an app store) to police your code, so you can do whatever the heck you want.

I'd wish for nothing more than the end of web and app front-ends in favor of purely structured data derived from natural language prompts by users. However, the more realistic mindset seems to be that: the front-end layer is such a high level of abstraction with a very low barrier to entry, so that its tech stack will be in constant flux, in favor of whoever's currently the best-financed entity seeking the most market share, the most developer mind-share, and the most behavioral control among its users.

Re: Valdi – A cross-platform UI framework that delivers native performance

#40

Post by daveidol »

joenot443 wrote: post #4

I was at Snap during this project’s early days (Screenshop!) and spent a bit of time debugging some stuff directly with Simon. He’s a wonderful engineer and I’m thrilled to see this project out in the open. Congratulations Snap team! Well deserved.

“Composer” ;)
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