I've worked and researched heavily in this field. If you want to write one codebase that hits all platforms with _actual native performance_ your only option at the moment is RN/Expo.
Valdi – A cross-platform UI framework that delivers native performance
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Re: Valdi – A cross-platform UI framework that delivers native performance
#152I've worked and researched heavily in this field. If you want to write one codebase that hits all platforms with _actual native performance_ your only option at the moment is RN/Expo.
Flutter performs better than RN in my experience (mobile)
Re: Valdi – A cross-platform UI framework that delivers native performance
#153Looks in concept very similar to React Native. So now we have React Native, Lynx.js (ByteDance/Tiktok) and Valdi all based on React. I think competition is good for devs. But not sure if any of those will create ecosystem and community big enough and fast enough to React Native. React Native grew a lot this year and a lot of things got or will be improved and copied from Lynx or Valid: - 3 modes of compilation (AOT,…
after small digging they have Full VSCode debugging [0] which is nice. RN have Radon IDE but it's a paid sub. What's interesting Valdi using Hermes (the one from RN) so maybe there is a way to retrofit this to work for RN. Wondering if they did AOT and JIT by themselve or they using static hermes branch or using only hermes in dev mode.
[0] https://github.com/Snapchat/Valdi/blob/main/docs/docs/workfl...
Re: Valdi – A cross-platform UI framework that delivers native performance
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
lol, yeah what do front ender devs know about UX. SMH…
Unfortunately, all too often not enough. But then again often one has UX designers for that, but they are all too often off to build flying castles in Figma.
Visual design is only one part of UX- interaction design and information architecture are equally important components.
At my last two jobs, when I did v front end work I had to coach designers through UX on a regular basis, because the designers did as much for the marketing department as they did for the development team.
Sadly, UX as a discipline doesn't get much love from most companies.
Re: Valdi – A cross-platform UI framework that delivers native performance
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It’s because if a webview app experience is good, you don’t notice it, you only notice if it’s bad. Aside from Apple’s apps (which imo are noticeably worse than the old ones, but that’s beside the point), what are some good WebView apps on iOS right now?
Somebody scraped the play store and checked the framework, so a list for Android WebView apps, built with capacitor, is here: https://capgo.app/top_capacitor_app/ Maybe an equivalent is there on iOS for the same app...
lichess is really good. Thanks for the info, I'm not surprised to learn it's a webview app, but it is really good.
It doesn't look native but who even cares. I think when a UI sucks or is unintuitive or buggy then "it's not native" is a sort of catchall easy complaint. Native is a crutch. Sometimes it's a good crutch (accessibility etc). But that's more about developer efficiency and bare minimums of polish.
Re: Valdi – A cross-platform UI framework that delivers native performance
#156Working 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…
If you still need to wrap a cross-platform web experience in a native container, I really begin to lose the plot. Once you are engaged with the iOS code signing monster, you might as well go all the way into the ecosystem.
To me, the web is the way around the app stores and codesign. I know how to visit HN on my iPhone despite there not being an official native app for it. It can work. The challenge is making it work in your particular case. Fear that the user wont know how to access the product seems to be a primary factor driving hyperbolic takes on how consumer apps must be built. Perhaps a bit of marketing budget (scan this QR code / visit this link) could eliminate a very expensive tech problem. Why fight visibility in the crowded App Store when there are countless other advertising channels you could pour your resources into?
> native code for the native notifications, GPS and healthkit / health connect.
Modern web can address everything here but the HealthKit item. You could consider handling this with a simple companion application that is exclusively about the collection and transfer of the data while respecting user privacy & consent procedures.
Re: Valdi – A cross-platform UI framework that delivers native performance
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Somebody scraped the play store and checked the framework, so a list for Android WebView apps, built with capacitor, is here: https://capgo.app/top_capacitor_app/ Maybe an equivalent is there on iOS for the same app...
Sadly i couldn’t find a reliable way to do it on Apple Store, it’s pretty hard to download from the store outside of apple device. If anyone know how i can do it too
It might not be possible but others have scraped just the app store and matched based on Android meta data: https://people.ece.ubc.ca/amesbah/resources/papers/mobilesof...
Re: Valdi – A cross-platform UI framework that delivers native performance
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
> its nearly better to write your business UI 3 times one for each platform. Anyone have any experience of doing this for a complex and long-life app? Sounds like a nightmare that would increase friction and decrease development fun by x10 because of the huge overhead and tedium of having to keep your features and tests in sync across platform for every change you want to iterate on, and requiring developers be profi…
You don’t do that though. You write your logic in a common languages and then the UI is an external layer you switch with build settings. The thing is, yiur choice is usually c|c++. Or an embedded language like lua. RN has gone the latter route and then extend it further by using React as a DSL for the UI.
> You write your logic in a common languages and then the UI is an external layer
Isn't reimplementing all your UI widgets, views, layouts and interactions for multiple platforms still a ton of work though? I'm not meaning people using things like React frameworks, but the suggestion of sticking to native only.
Re: Valdi – A cross-platform UI framework that delivers native performance
#159Working 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…
If you still need to wrap a cross-platform web experience in a native container, I really begin to lose the plot. Once you are engaged with the iOS code signing monster, you might as well go all the way into the ecosystem. To me, the web is the way around the app stores and codesign. I know how to visit HN on my iPhone despite there not being an official native app for it. It can work. The challenge is making it work…
Push notifications and mental real estate by being “an app” are the primary business reason (based on both statsig experiments I’ve seen across my career as well as some intuition about behavioral psychology regarding the app mental real estate bit).
Re: Valdi – A cross-platform UI framework that delivers native performance
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
That. And specifically, fuck Apple and their prohibition on JITs. We have a React Native app that shares some code with a webapp, and that needs to do some geometry processing. So we're constantly playing the game of "will it interpret quick enough". Everything works fine in browsers, but in a RN app it often slows down to unusable speeds.
Could your processing work in a webview? i.e. webgl or webasm or similar and you communicate with it via postMessage. Something like Polygen might help with the scaffolding, but I have not tried it personally
No, it's far too brittle. The latency is also terrible. In our case, we had to reimplement some parts in C++ to have reasonable performance.