sciter-js-sdk VS Ultralight

- https://gitlab.com/sciter-engine/sciter-js-sdk/-/tree/main/b... - Skia backend.

You can load in usciter this document:

https://gitlab.com/sciter-engine/sciter-js-sdk/-/blob/main/s...

It shows pretty large colorized texts so you can estimate how Direct2D and Skia handle GPU accelerated text rendering. For these two binaries the difference is only in graphics used - Direct2D and Skia.

Agree about virtualization in principle. Not that nightmarish though.

My Sciter supports built-in virtualization out of the box. But I shall admit that this is second approach to the problem.

Currently Sciter's behavior:virtual-list supports as fixed-height items (that's easy) as variable-height items like messages [1] in chats.

API is relatively simple [2]: single event "contentrequired" that virtual-list sends to JS. In response JS shall either append or prepend requested number of DOM elements to the container (a.k.a. sliding window scroller). Example, grid showing 20000 records: https://gitlab.com/sciter-engine/sciter-js-sdk/-/blob/main/s...

[1] https://sciter.com/behaviorvirtual-list-for-sciter-and-scite...

Thank you for your explanation. As for Electron alternatives, Sciter is much more lightweight, supports Vue and includes a native webview. Anyway, good luck with your project!

> we have a number of other libs to integrate, some of which add their own rendering (which requires access to e.g. a Vulkan context, not merely HTML/CSS or other high-level UI elements)…

I have a customer that is doing something close: it is a 3D CAD alike app where they have Vulkan rendering 3D scene with Sciter UI on top of that - rendering chrome UI around that 3D and on the same Vulkan surface.

Sciter API supports rendering in windowless mode (https://gitlab.com/sciter-engine/sciter-js-sdk/-/tree/main/d...) where app supplies OpenGL, Vulkan or DirectX context to render on.

> Sorry, but I'll have to pass.

Understood. Sometimes people need not just to get job done but also "OS" label on it.

Attempt to combine all these definition in single language is doomed to fail. If in doubts then look at WPF.

3. Notes on language-behind-UI...

If to consider #2 then such simple thing as JavaScript language and VM are quite adequate to the task. Language-behind-UI do not need to be that performant, but it must be flexible. I may express un-popular opinion but language-behind-UI should be typeless.

Simply put: don't do ray tracing in language-behind-UI. But! Such a language shall have simple mechanism of adding high performant functions. There are good languages that are specifically designed for performance: C, C++, D, Rust, Zig, WebAssembly, etc. You just need convenient mechanism to expose those functions to runtime of language-behind-UI. Like here: https://gitlab.com/sciter-engine/sciter-js-sdk/-/blob/main/d...

You need JITs, compilation, fat VMs and runtimes, strong types only if your language is the only mean to define algorithms in whole application. But expect that your code will always be sub-optimal - neither enough performant nor super flexible.

4. Conclusion

Flutter should be something Sciter-alike :) - use [X]HTML/JSX, CSS and some already well known language-behind-UI. JavaScript is the natural choice. If needed you should be able to use native UI components - like in Sciter you can use existing HWND based and windowless native components inside your UI. It may not follow Web UI model on 100% (that's impossible) but to be conceptually close so developers can reuse their skills. Web UI model is conceptually close to Mobile one - all application UI is constrained inside single window.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned it but I've been using SciterJS (website) for my most recent project. I wouldn't ever claim it's the best UI framework out there, but it's lightweight and I've never felt so productive - I've rapidly developed my UI and integrated it with my native C++ far faster than I thought possible. I will note that it is far, far cheaper and has so many more features than Ultralight does.

Only when code tries to access props/methods of the loaded object it gets fetched from disk, its __proto__ is set to particular class, etc.

More on this architecture: https://gitlab.com/sciter-engine/sciter-js-sdk/-/blob/main/d...

Patched QuickJS with storage support is here: https://gitlab.com/c-smile/quickjspp - it uses DyBase of Konstantin Knizhnik as a storage.

More on i18n support in Sciter.

Sciter got native (built-in) Signal implementation made after PReact's Signals;

[2] https://ultralig.ht/

Web rendering would be Blink, with V8 being the JavaScript engine. I believe they have their own UI rendering process.

I know of another company that does something similar for the UI process, but with WebKit instead as the base:

https://github.com/ultralight-ux/ultralight#rocket-dual-high...

What I'd really like to see with CEF et al, is JS being dropped, in favor of directly controlling the DOM from the host language. Then we could, for example, write a Rust (or Kotlin, Zig, Haskell, etc) desktop application that simply directly manipulated the DOM, and had it rendered by a HTML+CSS layout engine. Folks could then write a React-like framework for that language (to help render & re-render the DOM in an elegant way).

Ultralight (https://ultralig.ht/) looks pretty cool. I think another possible option is Servo (https://github.com/servo/servo) – it was abandoned by Mozilla along with Rust during their layoffs a while back (but the project still seems to have a decent bit of activity). It would be great if some group of devs could revive the project, or a company could fund such a revival.

Eventually, we'll need to reflect on, and explore whether HTML+CSS is really the best way to do layout, and we could maybe perhaps consider proting the Android/iOS layout approach over to desktop.

I'm curious if the project will be open-source or do you have plans to go the Awesomium/Ultralight route with both open/closed sources and volume licenses? Or do you plan to offer commercial support services like other open source software?

I’m not tied to any language, but it needs to be able to wrap a c++ library. I started with .NET 7 MAUI - no linux support & very mobile focused. Tried out Electron. Wins on ease and usability, but has massive overhead. (Basic “Hello world” executable compiled to over 200mb) I then discovered Ultralight (https://ultralig.ht/). Big win on size, but was last updated 3 years ago.

tauri exists or if you wanted to ultralig.ht

I agree web stuff is really the best way to develop UIs. Good luck making responsive stuff in C++ for example. The paradigm of HTML, CSS, and JS is extremely powerful and even allows you to use canvas, webgpu, wasm.

There are multiple commercial projects that use web dev paradigm for GUIs:

https://coherent-labs.com/

https://ultralig.ht/

https://sciter.com/

Nice review, thanks! There are also: Ultralight (based on Webkit), LiteHTML, Tkhtml3 and Lobo Evolution. See also timeline of web engines.