gallery VS webview

I was pessimistic about flutter 4 years ago but rechecked it recently (learning right now) and IMO it's really good user/developer proposition these days. They resolved most of issues on mobile devices and desktops - only web version still off but once wasmGC is ready (hopefully this year) probably things will improve.

Best way for developer elevator pitch just download few flutter apps and see how you like the experience:

1. wonderous - https://flutter.gskinner.com/wonderous/

2. flutterflow (low code + gui editor for flutter) - https://https://flutterflow.io/

3. appflowy (notion alternative) - https://appflowy.io/

4. flutter gallery (official flutter kitchen sink) -

Android (Google Play Store, .apk) - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.flutter.dem...

web (gallery.flutter.dev) - https://gallery.flutter.dev/

macOS (.zip) - https://github.com/flutter/gallery/releases/latest

5. official material 3.0 demo - https://flutter.github.io/samples/web/material_3_demo/#/

I recommend to checkout and play with material 3.0 demo (just keep in mind this is web version will have even better when using native compiled version on mobile or desktop):

https://flutter.github.io/samples/web/material_3_demo/#/

4) Try web flutter gallery to see numerous app samples (more complex) and widgets

https://gallery.flutter.dev/#/

again even better to download mobile or desktop version that there is in app store:

play store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.flutter.dem...

macos dmg (.zip): https://github.com/flutter/gallery/releases/latest

I tried both macos flutter gallery and on iOS and surpassingly is pretty good these days and smooth and feel native - even text selection works these days, moving cursor with long press on keyboard space etc. Occasionally was more difficult to dismiss keyboard on iOS and back/next mouse keys or touchpad gestures didn't work on macOS flutter gallery. But overall I'm quite satisfied and surprised comparing how it looked 4 years ago.

I remember the first time when I looked at the Flutter Gallery and was surprised at how things felt just broken in a web browser, for example: https://gallery.flutter.dev (I think it was the Reply example in particular)

Ctrl + click or middle mouse button didn't work on links, right click didn't work, selecting and copying text didn't work, inspect element didn't work (due to how the technology is built), even attempting to zoom the page did nothing.

This article does ring true both because of that experience, as well as some of the SPA implementations I've seen even with more conventional technologies.

Google Docs. Figma. Any Flutter app like https://gallery.flutter.dev/. Short answer, they're really not handling accessibility.

Even when you did that, scrolling was completely wrong. The web simply doesn’t expose primitives from which you can build native-feel scrolling, and the best you can manage on precise touchpads (that is, all laptops now) will normally feel terrible, and lack things like inertia which are rather important. https://gallery.flutter.dev/, for example, scrolls less than half as fast as it should, and lacks inertia. (… and renders text in the wrong font, and doesn’t do links at all where it obviously should, and uses scrollbars that behave all wrong quite apart from being overlay which my native aren’t, and get typing emoji wrong, and… and… seriously, it’s just a litany of awfulness.)

Oh wow. I had thought the claim that they were not producing any semantic web elements was almost certainly exaggerated. That said, for the number of things that are on https://gallery.flutter.dev/#/reply, there are a surprisingly low number of elements. Wow.

example: https://gallery.flutter.dev (and Flutter Gallery on the playstore)

You could just need to clear your cache, but I suspect might have something going on because of how you're loading your theme. Not sure about having two runapp functions. I would suggest inspecting gallery.flutter.dev and then implementing a splash screen the way they have, as you will get the benefit of having a slash while flutter is being loaded, vs a splash screen that won't start until after, which imho, defeats the purpose.

You can create the webview using each platforms native GUI toolkit and setup JS communication yourself OR you can use a lightweight library that does it for [1] (search its README for language "bindings").

[1] https://github.com/webview/webview

Each platform has it's own webview control available as a shared library installed with the OS.

MacOS has WKWebKit based on WebKit.

Windows has WebView2 based on Edge/Chromium.

Linux has webkit2gtk based on WebKit.

Tools like Tauri use a simple cross-platform single-header abstraction called webview.h[1].

Electron no longer allows Node.js to be called from renderer processes, all communication with Node.js is done via IPC.

In this case, why do we still need Electron? Why does it have to be tied to V8/Node.js?

The fact that Chromium Embedded Framework exists and is third-party makes me think that Chromium wasn't designed for being embedded, and Electron is filling that gap.

This is elucidated here further here https://trac.webkit.org/wiki/WebKit2:

> it's difficult to reuse their work...if another WebKit-based application or another port wanted to do multiprocess based on Chromium WebKit, it would be necessary to reinvent or cut & paste a great deal of code.

It makes me think that perhaps WebKit was the better choice for embedding. The fact that Node used V8 made Chromium the choice, and that Node being called from the renderer was the original way of working. Maybe because WebKit didn't have a build for Windows was an issue too...

But now that we have Bun, perhaps it's time that WebKit becomes that browser target of choice for desktop apps on macOS.

Unless WebView2 for macOS arrives, which would have a more sane cross-platform story. WebView2 has a very large feature-set though which make take a while to implement for macOS.

[1]: https://github.com/webview/webview/blob/master/webview.h

Nui could base on this in theory. Nui uses https://github.com/webview/webview under the hood, which provides browser windows for linux, windows or mac. Nui adds some cmake to make the "in-browser" and "main-process" part appear seemless, as well adding a DSEL for the "in-browser" view part.

WebView 7k

You mean something like this?

Golang can compile to windows statically, and on Windows those bindings are using the MSWebView2 API (aka Microsoft Edge webview).

I know that you can also compile the webview.cc into a dll specifically, and link against that. But I'd never done with Visual C++ because I am cross-compiling from Linux to Windows.

The README of the webview/webview project refers to the WebView2 SDK on NuGet, however [1]

[1] https://github.com/webview/webview#windows-preparation

The author shrugs off web tech (maybe because of electron bloat?) but you can avoid the bloat by using each platforms native web browser control. There are even cross-platform libraries that make creating the native control and cross-communication simple. These applications would be architecturally similar to Win32 apps using and communicating with a XAML Island, but the advantage of web tech is it's an open standard and WPF/WinUI is not.

For example, you could use a native webview (Edge WebView2 for Windows and WebKit for MacOS/Linux), which uses much less RAM than Electron.

From a more established company with more guaranteed long-term support than the web frameworks that solve the above problems (like Tauri and Webview)