The author stating that using a webserver and a full web framework for a desktop application feels wasteful seems oddly ironic when you follow up by using a browser and full framework for a desktop application.
ElectronCGI – A Solution to Cross-Platform GUIs for .NET Core
11–20 of 87 posts
Re: ElectronCGI – A Solution to Cross-Platform GUIs for .NET Core
#12Steve Sanderson (creator of Blazor) is working on something similar that doesn't use Electron: https://blog.stevensanderson.com/2019/11/01/exploring-lighte... From Blazor roadmaps a few months ago, I think the idea is that Blazor will become the recommended .NET Core cross-platform UI choice sometime after .NET 5.
But the big advantage of using Electron is that you know exactly what browser and Node version you are targetting. That takes away a lot of the cross-browser HTML/CSS pain.
Re: ElectronCGI – A Solution to Cross-Platform GUIs for .NET Core
#13This is a great step forward, but it seems like a great deal of overhead and complexity to have a cross-platform GUI. If I were creating a new cross-platform desktop application I would probably reach for Java instead. I know that's not the popular answer, but if a .NET Core cross-platform GUI requires either using Electron or simulating a client-server setup with Node then it's not there yet. To illustrate, here is…
Good luck getting that Swing app to look nice, though. Which is a breeze with HTML/CSS.
Re: ElectronCGI – A Solution to Cross-Platform GUIs for .NET Core
#14This is a great step forward, but it seems like a great deal of overhead and complexity to have a cross-platform GUI. If I were creating a new cross-platform desktop application I would probably reach for Java instead. I know that's not the popular answer, but if a .NET Core cross-platform GUI requires either using Electron or simulating a client-server setup with Node then it's not there yet. To illustrate, here is…
Would that Java application be capable of running in the browser? JavaFX, maybe?
That "Hello World" example uses Java's Swing GUI framework which is older and does not port to the web as easily as JavaFX.
Here is the JavaFX-based "Hello World":
https://docs.oracle.com/javafx/2/get_started/hello_world.htm...
There are also numerous Java to Web frameworks and solutions like TeaVM (https://blogs.oracle.com/javamagazine/java-in-the-browser-wi...), JSF (https://javaee.github.io/javaserverfaces-spec/), and many others, but at that point you are no longer talking about just a cross-platform GUI--you are talking about a web application.
Re: ElectronCGI – A Solution to Cross-Platform GUIs for .NET Core
#15Steve Sanderson (creator of Blazor) is working on something similar that doesn't use Electron: https://blog.stevensanderson.com/2019/11/01/exploring-lighte... From Blazor roadmaps a few months ago, I think the idea is that Blazor will become the recommended .NET Core cross-platform UI choice sometime after .NET 5.
One of the comments on that blog leads to WinUI, which I would assume Microsoft would recommend first
https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/blob/master/d...
Not sure if it's cross-platform though.
Re: ElectronCGI – A Solution to Cross-Platform GUIs for .NET Core
#16I always wonder why Qt5+/Qml/QtQuick have not taken the XP desktop development by storm. QML is JS like, there's an IDE and KDE seems to have built lot of good looking desktop software using Kirigami/QtQuick. It's got to be better than anything Electron for sure. Anyone know if .NET Core Qt bindings are a technical possibility?
My bet is the licensing stuff which can make it difficult/expensive to make proprietary apps with it. (In practice, I know the picture is a bit complicated.)
Also, personally, while QML probably is the nicest OOP/bindings style UI framework I've seen, it's still not as nice as any of the reactive ones (i.e. React, Vue, Angular2, Flutter, etc…).
Re: ElectronCGI – A Solution to Cross-Platform GUIs for .NET Core
#17This is a great step forward, but it seems like a great deal of overhead and complexity to have a cross-platform GUI. If I were creating a new cross-platform desktop application I would probably reach for Java instead. I know that's not the popular answer, but if a .NET Core cross-platform GUI requires either using Electron or simulating a client-server setup with Node then it's not there yet. To illustrate, here is…
Good luck getting that Swing app to look nice, though. Which is a breeze with HTML/CSS.
Customizing the appearance is one place where Swing's age shows. It is possible to create a custom "Look and Feel", but it is not as easy as HTML / CSS:
https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/lookandfeel/
JavaFX does allow CSS to be used to style it:
https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/javafx/user-interface-tutor...
Re: ElectronCGI – A Solution to Cross-Platform GUIs for .NET Core
#18I always wonder why Qt5+/Qml/QtQuick have not taken the XP desktop development by storm. QML is JS like, there's an IDE and KDE seems to have built lot of good looking desktop software using Kirigami/QtQuick. It's got to be better than anything Electron for sure. Anyone know if .NET Core Qt bindings are a technical possibility?
A .Net Core Qt Quick binding is not only possible, but very real: https://github.com/qmlnet/qmlnet
I think most KDE apps are neither written using Kirigami nor Qt Quick however, but plain old Qt Widgets (maybe I'm misinformed, but Kirigami doesn't look much like it's customizable by the desktop environment, which is something I love about KDE apps).
Re: ElectronCGI – A Solution to Cross-Platform GUIs for .NET Core
#19I always wonder why Qt5+/Qml/QtQuick have not taken the XP desktop development by storm. QML is JS like, there's an IDE and KDE seems to have built lot of good looking desktop software using Kirigami/QtQuick. It's got to be better than anything Electron for sure. Anyone know if .NET Core Qt bindings are a technical possibility?
> I always wonder why Qt5+/Qml/QtQuick have not taken the XP desktop development by storm. If I had to guess, it's because people are misinformed about the pricing and features. I regularly see people who assume that you either have to pay a large per-developer fee, or completely open source your application, even though Qt is licensed under the LGPL, so you're fine as long as you don't statically link it or depend o…
LGPL is problematic for App Store, since the user should be able to relink the app with a newer version [of QT] if they wanted to.
Re: ElectronCGI – A Solution to Cross-Platform GUIs for .NET Core
#20Calling it CGI seems like an awful awful move.