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Zero-native – Build native desktop apps with web UI

40 pointsby gedytoday at 1:45 AM37 commentsview on HN

Comments

h4ch1today at 5:17 AM

> Use the system WebView for lightweight apps, or bundle Chromium via CEF

so basically a vibe coded Tauri in zig? I don't like calling webview dependent applications "native desktop apps".

Native desktop apps means using the OS primitives and directives to draw the UI imo; WinForms, SwiftUI, and their ilk.

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aiscomingtoday at 5:15 AM

I love the redefinition of "native desktop app" - a web app which uses the system web-view instead of bundling Chrome.

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liftytoday at 7:09 AM

Slightly off topic, but what is the best way to build a cross platform GUI app these days, but something with good graphics, typography, etc. I mean a beautiful app. I would prefer to have a shared core in Go, and then something around it to give me the GUI. I know on MacOS it is straightforward to build something beautifully looking with their native Swift toolkit, but not sure on Linux and Windows. Is it better to just use a web view, or perhaps Flutter?

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AbuAssartoday at 4:34 AM

> No borrow checker. No lifetimes. No fighting the compiler for 20 minutes over a string.

I don’t like this attitude, both zig and rust have their strengths.

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norskeldtoday at 5:24 AM

Given this is from Vercel and most likely vibe coded (hopefully not), I wonder how many zero-day vulnerabilities will be there... :^)

jerlethtoday at 5:54 AM

Sounds very similar to webui (zig version: https://github.com/webui-dev/zig-webui)

What is the difference?

easeouttoday at 7:07 AM

Then why make an app instead of a website?

iamcalledrobtoday at 6:24 AM

Using the "system WebView" is not a positive on Linux.

For some reason that always means WebKitGTK, which is crummy.

Someone, anyone, please get CEF working with GTK4.

vijaybrittotoday at 5:05 AM

Im not sure if people are getting the biggest problem in electron desktop apps.

Its RAM usage not the disk!!

Why are they all making the same thing in different ways?! I have never worked on an electron app where the executable size was an impediment to the business. Its always the RAM/CPU usage. If we are going to work on the same webviews like electron and others, how will this make any difference?

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jsomedontoday at 6:56 AM

That is not native at all.

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Oxodaotoday at 6:56 AM

This is not native.

DeathArrowtoday at 5:33 AM

Still, using system's native GUI should be more performant and use less memory.

I would rather see existing Zig GUI libraries using system's GUI primitives improving. With LLM GUI stuff should be simple enough and we don't need to rely on people web expertise to build desktop apps.

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boxedtoday at 5:28 AM

No screenshot examples even? :/

iamsaitamtoday at 6:36 AM

zero examples