Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Deno Desktop

docs.deno.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 418 posts

Re: Deno Desktop

#12

Post by franz899 »

sjeno wrote: post #4
solarkraft wrote: post #2

This is a smart thing to ship. For me it would totally be a consideration when deciding on a platform to use.

agree, small footprint & cross-platform looks like a nice alternative to electron or tauri..

Their comparison page shows some savings, but not in every case (~40 MB / ~150 MB) https://docs.deno.com/runtime/desktop/comparison/

Re: Deno Desktop

#13

Post by jorisw »

utopiah wrote: post #9
jorisw wrote: post #3

> Web technology is the most widely-known UI toolkit in the world. Poor choice of words there IMHO. The reason Electron apps get a lot of flak is because they are everything _but_ a UI toolkit. They consistently miss the mark in adopting UI patterns from their host OS. Web tech is just web tech. Yes it will allow you to render a button, but even unstyled, the button won't necessarily look native to the OS, and will v…

> look native to the OS Is that a problem? A button with a legible label is a button. The host OS doesn't have to look exactly like the applications it runs.

Consistency is a large factor in any good design, UI design more so.

Re: Deno Desktop

#14

Post by droidjj »

> The default WebView backend uses the operating system's own webview for small binaries, and you still have the entire npm ecosystem available through Deno's Node compat layer.

Sounds like a similar architecture to Tauri, but your business logic is in typescript instead of rust.

Re: Deno Desktop

#15

Post by conradludgate »

jorisw wrote: post #3

> Web technology is the most widely-known UI toolkit in the world. Poor choice of words there IMHO. The reason Electron apps get a lot of flak is because they are everything _but_ a UI toolkit. They consistently miss the mark in adopting UI patterns from their host OS. Web tech is just web tech. Yes it will allow you to render a button, but even unstyled, the button won't necessarily look native to the OS, and will v…

How is it a poor choice of words? It might not be "native" UI, but they never claimed as such.

I've always felt that native UI on Linux always looks incredibly ugly and I'd much rather use a nicely styled HTML+CSS layout instead.

In my experience, Electron mostly gets flak for being bloated and slow, it not being native is sometimes a secondary point people add on top.

I've always wanted to build a direct-browser integration that could use HTML+CSS for the layout, but avoids needing a JS runtime. Idk how lightweight servo is but one day I hope I will see my idea come to light

Re: Deno Desktop

#16

Post by andyferris »

utopiah wrote: post #10

Interesting but IMHO as we see on mobile providing WebViews work. Maybe instead of having Electron, Tauri, Electrobun, now Deno desktop but also plenty of alternatives then desktop browsers should provide WebViews on desktop with sandbox and permissions that make those applications usable. The alternatives listed here would just be fallback for a transition period until the WebViews are "good enough".

Is it not a web view? With nodejs capabilities from the “backend” half of the app for normal desktop app filesystem access etc?

Re: Deno Desktop

#17

Post by Gigachad »

jorisw wrote: post #13
utopiah wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> look native to the OS Is that a problem? A button with a legible label is a button. The host OS doesn't have to look exactly like the applications it runs.

Consistency is a large factor in any good design, UI design more so.

They have internal consistency. The iOS version looks like the macos version which looks like the web version, etc.

This upsets HN users but the rest of the world decided that apps looking like windows built ins doesn't matter.

Re: Deno Desktop

#18

Post by progx »

droidjj wrote: post #14

> The default WebView backend uses the operating system's own webview for small binaries, and you still have the entire npm ecosystem available through Deno's Node compat layer. Sounds like a similar architecture to Tauri, but your business logic is in typescript instead of rust.

> Opt into the bundled Chromium (CEF) backend when you need identical rendering across macOS, Windows, and Linux.

Sound more like Electrobun

Re: Deno Desktop

#19

Post by Abishek_Muthian »

jorisw wrote: post #3

> Web technology is the most widely-known UI toolkit in the world. Poor choice of words there IMHO. The reason Electron apps get a lot of flak is because they are everything _but_ a UI toolkit. They consistently miss the mark in adopting UI patterns from their host OS. Web tech is just web tech. Yes it will allow you to render a button, but even unstyled, the button won't necessarily look native to the OS, and will v…

Every time I use Zed across Linux, macOS and Windows , I'm amazed stable and performant it's GPUI framework is. As a user, I'm very happy with it; of course some basic features like accessibility is missing but I'm sure it will be implemented soon.

As a developer, I'm not sure what's the barrier for entry is apart from Rust then again it's the USP as well.

Re: Deno Desktop

#20

Post by pjmlp »

jorisw wrote: post #3

> Web technology is the most widely-known UI toolkit in the world. Poor choice of words there IMHO. The reason Electron apps get a lot of flak is because they are everything _but_ a UI toolkit. They consistently miss the mark in adopting UI patterns from their host OS. Web tech is just web tech. Yes it will allow you to render a button, but even unstyled, the button won't necessarily look native to the OS, and will v…

Yeah, it is mostly laziness and cost cutting at the expense of users.

Nowadays there isn't even an excuse anymore, just vibe code it away in native frameworks.

Post reply on HN