Textual Web: TUIs for the Web

TUI is just a thinly disguised GUI. I mean it's pretty cool what they've done, but if it's effectively just an alternative graphical frontend (that happens to run in a terminal emulator), well I guess someone out there has a use case where they need to run this over an SSH session?

Personally I find CLI (not TUI) and/or client libraries a much more attractive proposition; otherwise a native application, that uses proper system widgets and integrates with the rest of your desktop environment (an icon in the dock, system notifications, matching light/dark theme, etc), seems superior to a TUI in all aspects? (Except for "I need to run this over SSH / serial console"...)

Am I missing something here?

TUIs are a really great way to mix GUIs into CLI "suites." For example, one may usually use homebrew through a CLI, but one can imagine that certain workflows with homebrew might be better served through a TUI than a CLI. Perhaps browsing and filtering the list of packages -- though the specific workflow isn't important for this example. In that case, homebrew can ship a CLI that handes most or all workflows, plus one or more TUI workflows to enhance some subset of those workflows. Because you're already interacting with it in a terminal, it's a pretty smooth transition to give you the rich TUI experience when appropriate. The same could not be said of a native application.

I'm probably a bit more positive to TUI type applications than you (and don't care about theme matching, docks, or notifications), given e.g. my editor runs purely in a terminal (and I'm writing a new terminal...) but I think we sort-of agree when you say it's just a thinly disguised GUI.

While I think it's impressive how good they've made it look, for me the point of a TUI is for it to be simple and pared down. It's nice if it looks good, but I want something keyboard driven and command focused rather than UI element focused. I'm not sure who the target group is here. Are there enough people who love to work in a terminal but still want their apps to look like GUI apps?

EDIT: From elsewhere on the site, it seems like they're trying to target people who would like to write GUIs, but find writing GUIs too hard, and that the TUI part is just a starting point. I'm ambivalent of the chances for that to succeed, but who knows.

TUIs feel like the epitome of “they were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.”

> an icon in the dock, system notifications, matching light/dark theme, etc

Textual apps will eventually support this and other OS integrations exposed by the browser. It's never going to look native, given the terminal origins. But it will be possible for them to play better with the OS. And when we add PWA support, they will have a more desktop look and feel.

SSH is an advantage when running in the terminal. In the browser the advantage is that you can deploy them where you couldn't run a web server. Think IOT, routers, lab equipment. Or just cloud servers, where you want a backend to work with the local file system.

Another advantage is development speed. Textual has a learning curve which is far less steep that a regular web stack. It allows non-web developers to build bespoke apps.

I also think that TUIs can be more attractive than GUIs in some scenarios. Not because they look better, but you can build UIs that are snappy and keyboard driven. TUIs are a more natural fit for that kind of interface.