web-to-desktop-framework-compariso VS web-nfc

https://github.com/Elanis/web-to-desktop-framework-compariso...

Electron comes out looking impressive at runtime!

Memory Usage - (Average of runs) Median of difference between system measured free memory before execution and during execution)

> it's still a far cry from your ~200 Mb Electron hello world.

I think that projects that ship packaged web apps but attempt to use the system native web views where available are really nice, like Wails: https://wails.io/ (so for example, on Windows it would use Webview2, so you don't have to package an entire Chromium install yourself)

Here's a comparison of how the distribution sizes change, Wails in particular also has way faster builds than something like Tauri: https://github.com/Elanis/web-to-desktop-framework-compariso...

That said, I wish we got more native software, or even something like LCL that can target Win32, GTK, Qt or whatever else is available. Sure, writing components that are available on a lot of platforms and work similarly everywhere is a pain for the developers, but I applaud the effort regardless, since the above solutions like Wails don't actually do anything for the memory usage and CPU cycles, whereas native GUI software is better for most apps that don't try to be very interactive.

I mean, most OSes already ship with a WebView component that you can use instead of shipping an entire browser runtime.

Wails does that: https://wails.io/

Tauri also does that: https://tauri.app/

That does help with the needed resources quite a bit: https://github.com/Elanis/web-to-desktop-framework-compariso...

Sadly it doesn’t change the memory usage much so the technology is still inherently wasteful, but on a certain level it feels like a lost battle - because web technologies often feel like the choice of least resistance when you want GUI software that will run on a bunch of platforms while not being annoying to develop (from the perspective of your run of the mill dev).

I looked into some alternatives a while back [1] and thought Neutralino looked promising except that it doesn't support node modules. I.e. you cannot use the existing ecosystem of node-stuff.

Still, glad there are many options for using web UI to create desktop apps these days.

[1]: Neutralino themselves link to this nice comparison table: https://github.com/Elanis/web-to-desktop-framework-compariso...

> but it uses your system's existing browser

According to (1) that is incorrect. It uses WebKitGTK+.

(1) https://github.com/Elanis/web-to-desktop-framework-compariso...

Is there currently support for Web NFC https://w3c.github.io/web-nfc/ on Blazor?

On Chrome for Android it's not behind experimental flag any more, which is approximately 70% of the mobile users according to CanIUse.com, and it's mostly a proof of concept. I need to actually transfer some data, so QR-codes won't help me. Hopefully P2P over Web NFC will be possible in the future. It's an experiment to see what can be done now, and maybe push the technology a little. So no business depending on this.

If so, what have you used if for and what's your experience? I'm curious on how well it works and how difficult it is to start hacking on. https://w3c.github.io/web-nfc/

You could write your own stuff, though. NFC has an active communications mode. Web-NFC is active on a few phone browsers, like Chrome for Android. If you've got two phones that close there are likely other options like ad hoc wifi, but it exists if you want to try it.

Again, to add - YubiKey's smart card interface is also blocked from WebNFC. Same for Web Bluetooth, all BLE FIDO keys are blocked.