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HTML, CSS, and JavaScript can be used to build beautiful (and useful) UI's (especially now we have HTML5 and CSS3), and lots of people already know them. Though it's still way beyond my reach, how difficult can it be to bring the whole web app thing to desktop apps? We already test apps on our local servers before hosting them.

In my opinion, it's a nice, simple idea which will create a boom in desktop apps. Plus, given that these apps will already be sharing so much code with web apps, they might be able to offer better connectivity.

Why isn't it being done?

Zaz
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kapv89
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7 Answers7

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Adobe already did it with Adobe Air, and Mozilla too with Prism . Google also tried to bridge the gap between desktop and web with Google Gears.

But in general, web technologies are not suited for many types of desktop applications, here some reasons why:

  • No immediately available full hardware access.
  • No low level system access.
  • No easily available filesystem access (the technologies I mentioned above allow you to get fs access but every one of them as its own different solution).
  • Performance. A native, compiled application is generally faster than a Javascript application.
  • Easy for a competitors to steal the source code
  • No libraries available for specialized tasks. Ex. image-processing, sound encoding, database access, network programming etc...
Trasplazio Garzuglio
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  • To be fair, not all applications need full hardware or low level access. VM languages like Java surely work well without that kind of access – TheLQ Jun 13 '11 at 05:48
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    Well, do you know many desktop Java apps? – Yoni Roit Jun 13 '11 at 07:26
  • what about javascript on google's v8, i have read its really fast (as fast as java), i can see the difference myself when i run a heavy js animation in chrome and other browsers. And with growing api's for html5, js realy brings a lot to the table, with the canvas stuff, you can do image processing and all... so i don't think js really has that bad set of tools, as a plus, it is more of a functional programming language, (functions are first class objects) – kapv89 Jun 13 '11 at 07:45
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    just checked out prism(now WebRunner) and google gears, nice stuff to tinker with,thanks – kapv89 Jun 13 '11 at 08:04
  • yes v8 is fast. Taking as an example image processing, you can't access the already existing and very good libraries written in compiled code, you have to reinvent the wheel again. At the end, it boils down to what you application must do, if it's just accessing some data online and displaying them then the technologies I mentioned may fit your needs. – Trasplazio Garzuglio Jun 13 '11 at 12:00
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    @YoniRoit: Eclipse, Vuze, my pharmacist's order system... – haylem Jun 06 '12 at 02:26
  • I find it impossible to believe JavaScript is as fast as Java (from prime compilers/interpreters and well written code). A dynamically typed language is inherently crippled in that sense. – Thomas Eding Nov 12 '14 at 05:27
  • I know this is old, but wouldn't it be possible to use these web technologies **specifically** for the UI, and nothing else? For example, wouldn't it be possible to create a C# project where the UI is rendered via HTML/CSS instead of WPF? That would be, in my unprofessional opinion, much simpler. Sure, UI source could be stolen, but isn't that why web UIs are where they're at today? Beautiful and simple (ish). – Chris Cirefice Nov 12 '14 at 17:05
  • @ChrisCirefice: I'd guess the reason is that because once you've written your app as client-server, it's trivial to deploy the application as a web application (for security, adding Basic Auth can be done without changing the application code at all). Why pretend that your app is a desktop application if it's actually network capable. A desktop application written with web technology stack is simply a web application which does not listen to remote requests. – Lie Ryan Nov 16 '14 at 07:47
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The framework that comes to mind is Adobe Air. It allows web developers to use Javascript/HTML to develop desktop applications. Javascript/HTML on it's own is not suitable for desktop applications because often times a desktop application will need access to services provided by the operating system, e.g. opening files, launching other applications, etc. Javascript on its own does not allow access to such services so you need something extra and frameworks like Adobe Air provide that extra glue.

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IMO, I don't adopt HTML and CSS as a way to layout GUIs because there is no compiler I know of for these languages. If I have an error in the code, I have to go look for it myself or I may not even notice it (or go to the HTML site to test it).

In c++ I like that it wont let me compile unless the code is correct (except for catching runtime issues).

Also I don't believe CSS & HTML play very well together yet, such as using float in CSS - depending on your HTML code & use - the result of float will have different outcomes - a lack of consistency compared to using absolute positioning in win32 or the great Java Swing layout managers.

whostolemyhat
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user14321
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    HTML and CSS validators which will do basically what your C++ compiler is doing: syntax checks and type checks. I believe that some powerfull IDE come with such validators. – Arnaud Le Blanc Jun 13 '11 at 09:49
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    For the positionning part, CSS also has absolute positionning, and HTML5 has much more than Swing's layout managers. Some editors will also let you design your GUI in a WYSIWYG fashion. – Arnaud Le Blanc Jun 13 '11 at 09:52
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There are a couple of ways to do this now. There's the Mozilla Application Framework which is often used by web browsers like Firefox but is also used by, for example, ActiveState's Komodo IDE.

There's also Qt, which in Qt Quick has CSS and a Javascript-like language.

Andrew Dalke
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A bit late, but if you use AsYouWish in Firefox (or create Firefox add-ons if you don't mind zipping up your files and testing with their tools), you can create apps in HTML which have desktop privileges. If you use WebAppFind (currently Windows only), you can also get desktop files to open from the desktop directly into a web app (without a need for drag and drop).

Disclaimer: These (open-source) add-ons were created by me.

Brett Zamir
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You can use Javascript, HTML and CSS to build apps for the Windows Store, Windows Phone and - I assume - XBox via "Universal Apps". (To be clear, starting in Visual Studio using File|New Project...)

This is using the above to build your UX and the application code against an implementation of the native APIs.

Naturally instead of this being seen as an attempt by Microsoft to open up the platform to more developers it was seen as deprecating C# and XAML based dev - which of course they weren't but that's not nearly as good a story... regardless whilst these are not necessarily the sorts of desktop apps the question considers they are native.

Murph
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One major reason is that if you didn't want your app to be easily stolen and copied you would have to also create an application that held a WebControl that directly linked to your files packaged up some way.
In fact, there are applications that do this. Titanium Appcelerator is one. I'm not recommending you use it because the last time I looked at it it was full of bugs and was poorly supported. You'll have to do your own research into whether it's worth it.

James P. Wright
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