webview VS Video-Hub-App

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)

First $100: Thirty copies sold of Video Hub App

First $1,000: Three hundred copies sold of my Video Hub App

https://videohubapp.com/

Though I do donate $3.50 of every sale to a cost-effective charity so in theory I made no money for a while until I bumped the price to $5 / copy.

semi-on-topic: I created Video Hub App that is like YouTube for local files: shows you a gallery with scrub-able (preview on hover) thumbnails. But does not work streaming videos to TV / tablet - only for local consumption. Hope someone finds it useful.

https://videohubapp.com/

MIT Open Source: https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App

I created Video Hub App which is MIT License

https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App

I also sell it for $5 and have sold just over 5,000 copies last month (5 years old app). Importantly, $3.50 of every purchase goes to a cost-effective charity, GiveWell recommended Against Malaria Foundation (see website for details).

https://videohubapp.com/

"The problem" might be that people in this thread and others get frustrated because others have different goals than them.

Of course Electron is overkill for a single-button application. But Visual Basic is absolutely going to be a headache if you want a custom GUI.

Pick the tool that's right for the job!

I build this with Electron: https://videohubapp.com/

Simplest File Renamer - https://www.yboris.dev/renamer & https://github.com/whyboris/Simplest-File-Renamer

I wanted to be able to quickly rename files with my text editor (using keyboard commands), so this lets me do it. Plus I share the app online for free.

Video Hub App - https://videohubapp.com/ & https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App

I started it just for myself, but it ended up so good I spent several more years improving it as people kept buying it (up to almost 5,000 purchases since I started).

Also wrote a couple of dev tools for myself (sharing via NPM too) - https://www.yboris.dev/

I created Video Hub App: https://videohubapp.com/ - it shows screenshots from videos as you scrub/hover across the thumbnail.

I've been so frustrated that FFprobe functionality is not part of FFmpeg.

My app extracts screenshots from videos to create a beautiful gallery of videos. But even though I include FFmpeg already, I need a 50mb FFprobe executable to be bundled with my app just so that I can determine the width, height, duration, and fps of a video file! What is it that FFprobe does that FFmpeg couldn't do with a few extra pieces of exposed API?

https://videohubapp.com/ - https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App

https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App/blob/772b25bbd4b41...

Created Video Hub App (that will be 5 years old next month). I sell it for $5 and $3.50 of each purchase goes to the cost-effective charity Against Malaria Foundation (See GiveWell.org for details).

It was averaging around 100 purchases per month, though it's lower over the last year as I've not had time to release new updates (moving to another state is challenging).

https://videohubapp.com/ - Think of it like YouTube for videos on your computer. Browse, search, and organize your videos

MIT Open Source: https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App

Built Video Hub App that almost 5,000 people have purchased. I was a math teacher, became a web dev 6 years ago, built this 5 years ago. Most proceeds go to charity. Very minor by comparison to others, but I'm just starting out ;)

https://videohubapp.com/ && https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App

What I did that is most impactful is that I've been giving at least 10% of my income to cost-effective charities for over 10 years now (see Giving What We Can - thousands of others do the same). This amounts to almost $100,000 given to charity which translates to thousands of people protected from malaria for many years of their lives.

My personal model for my commercial software: charityware - require a payment but made most proceeds go to my favorite (cost-effective) charity.

I'm getting about 100 purchases ($500/month, donating $350 of that) with my Video Hub App - https://videohubapp.com/ - which is also open source - https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App

I wrote about charityware a few years ago: https://medium.com/@whyboris/charityware-doing-good-with-pro...