Is it going to support iOS/Android?
No customizable programmable browser runtimes exist for those.
Deno Desktop
141–150 of 418 posts
Re: Deno Desktop
#142> 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…
At this point the only OS with a consistent look and feel at all is Mac. For the other OSes, I don't even know what a "native" look and feel would be. And most apps have their own branding and style they want to tout anyway. So I don't think "apps should look native" is the leading reason to not use Electron. For me, the leading reason to use Electron is the fact that I already have a browser running so why not just…
> Make it a PWA if you want it in its own window.
Seems like I'm part of a shrinking minority (in this thread at least) who believes that web[sites/apps] in a browser, and apps running on the host platform, are different things in terms of UX expectations.
Re: Deno Desktop
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
It hasn't made any inroads on the desktop though... all anyone did was just package their own SWA into a self-contained browser that serves its own content. They continue to be websites, with all the pitfalls of them. I don't need to spend 2GB-4GB of RAM just to have a over-glorified IRC clone! Also, the native toolkits are fine. Windows has two toolkits, the ShellUI/MFC family (which does everything required, althou…
I think the fact that you listed off five toolkits for three different OSes, all of which are "that OS's own toolkit," might point at the root of the problem here.
Windows is so fucking old that I think it has a right to try again.
And, btw, the reason Microsoft even bothered is because (dun dun dunnnn) lots of internal apps at Microsoft were written with Qt, not MFC, and leadership got pissed when they realized (they couldn't tell the difference, since Qt does the native++ technique).
As for Linux, yeah, thats a shitshow. Qt was closed source, Linux isn't, so they made Gtk, but then Qt got open sourced, and then the Gtk guys just kept going. Qt can mimic Gtk3/4 themes and already uses 100% native rendering (same APIs Gtk does).
People keep writing Gtk apps for some reason, and I don't know why. I can get the C++ hate, but Qt has the cleanest C++ I've ever seen.
Re: Deno Desktop
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it not a web view? With nodejs capabilities from the “backend” half of the app for normal desktop app filesystem access etc?
If a Web View is not provided by a browser then it's an already installed browser then it's as they say "web rendering engine" that they ship along. I'm trying to argue that it should already be available via Firefox, Chromium, etc on desktop.
Firefox doesn't release a webview engine but if they did I wonder if Linux distros would use it.
Re: Deno Desktop
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> basic features like accessibility is missing but I'm sure it will be implemented soon. Accessibility implementations frequently are more complex than the entire UI drawing bits. Most custom UI toolkits never implement accessibility, even decades after creation. That hope is misplaced.
I agree about the complexity, but the core developers understand that the accessibility support is crucial and that's where my hope comes from.
Re: Deno Desktop
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They consistently miss the mark in adopting UI patterns from their host OS. What you suggest is a disadvantage is one of the key advantages of Electron to me. I precisely do not want my things to look different on different OS. I don't have the resources to test my apps on all devices, and knowing that whatever I test on one system looks the same on another is A+.
That's an advantage to you. Not necessarily to your users.
The alternative is not that users get a UI specific for their OS, it is that users get nothing since I do not have the resources to develop for multiple systems. So yes, it is also an advantage to users.
Re: Deno Desktop
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is not why people use Electron. The goal is not and never was to just be a "UI toolkit" and "adopting UI patterns from their host OS". Chromium has so much stuff packed into it, its insane. All that utility comes with Electron. And that's a good thing. If you ever worked with video, for example, you know that having the full power of a modern browser in a desktop app is a game changer. Video playback (not to men…
chromium is basically operating system at this point, it lacks kernel and ability to boot independently (added in chromium os), which is both good (from abilities standpoint) and bad (when copy of chromium is bundled with every app that renders webform with text field and button and nothing else) when it goes about using webapps as desktop apps, native PWA support should be used, it would - in theory at least - lesse…
> chromium is basically operating system at this point
I get what you're trying to say, but Chromium is far from being an OS. What you could say is, Chromium is as complex as an OS, or is replacing the OS in providing functional libraries atop devices (OS-provided application framework, if you will).
Re: Deno Desktop
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
Consistency is the reason why Electron is great. Consistency of the UI across operating systems.
Great for the developer. The user doesn’t use Mac, Windows and Linux. Just one for work and one at home, with mostly different apps, so they couldn’t care less if it looks the same on different platforms.
They may care, however, if they get anything at all. I do not have the resources to target something to all platforms, so the alternative wouldn't be "Users get UI targeted towards their OS", the alternative would be "Users get nothing since developers don't have the time to also target their system".
Re: Deno Desktop
#149Having deno desktop do the framework handling for a bunch of popular options is an interesting choice. It seems deno is trying less to be an agnostic JS runtime, and more an "integrate everything toolkit" (not unlike Spring in the Java space).
Re: Deno Desktop
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not part of the Apple world, but I thought they gave a damn?
Nah they stopped caring as well. Developing an application for macOS is hell nowadays. I hate the state of things but both Apple and Microsoft dropped the ball. Linux is even worse, so yeah I don't see a reality out of this unless we actually create something that surpasses the web in all measures.
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