

Appify-UI - Create the simplest possible Mac OS X apps, using HTML5 for the UI - dwynings
https://github.com/subtleGradient/Appify-UI

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dylanpyle
Having worked extensively on a project that used something similar (we
switched from Titanium Desktop to Mozilla's Chromeless project over the course
of the dev cycle) as an underlying technology, I see a few things this needs
to address. There IS a valuable niche here - Chromeless and Titanium are the
only real competitors - and neither are solving it particularly well (though
both slightly nicer than Appify as it currently stands).

First: Lower-level APIs. That means I need Javascript hooks into file access,
menu bar content, cross-domain requests, camera and microphone, etc etc etc.
Without this, no meaningful apps can be created.

Second: Config. Let me specify the startup window parameters (perhaps using a
config JSON file included with the app source). Height, width, and position at
least. Maybe support for multiple windows?

Third: Support. This one is where Titanium and Chromeless both fall flat on
their face. Titanium Desktop is dead; the company has shifted 100% of efforts
into an equivalent platform for mobile devices. Things are broken and aren't
getting fixed, which makes it unfeasible to use for long-term development. The
same applies to Chromeless; I've submitted dealbreaking bugs to the github -
things simply Don't Work - and receieved no developer response whatsoever.
Again, it seems as if the dev team has lost interest.

I really hope that you're planning on pursuing this as more than a one-off
github project, because you have the opportunity to dominate an area of the
"app development for web developers" market that NOBODY is currently solving.
Best of luck.

 __*

EDIT: And for all of those who (largely correctly) will claim "desktop is
dead, stop pretending it's the web" - you're right. The thing is, the project
I was working on found ourselves in an interesting position, and we certainly
weren't the only ones. We wanted to build a web app, and knew that the web was
the future of our product. However, there was functionality we needed
(filesystem access, non-flash microphone access, etc etc) that simply doesn't
exist (yet!) on the web. Specifications and standards have been proposed and
are being implemented, but we unfortunately can't assume that every potential
user has a Chrome nightly build. Distributing an app running in an invisible
web environment allowed us to develop the code we would be able to use long-
term, while giving us a predictable, highly up-to-date, and _extensible_ (via
native hooks thru javascript) access to the local machine.

Also: cocui looks awesome, and worth checking out. My team has since decided
to accept our limitations and move to strictly web, but if I was considering a
similar project again I would definitely consider it.

~~~
saurik
One of the things that I've done for iOS developers is provide something
called "WebCycript": a reasonably seamless way for you to just <script
language="text/cycript"> in an HTML document being rendered (in this case, on
the lock screen, to allow for easy-to-make lock screen widgets), and then have
access to Objective-C APIs (even using Objective-C syntax; cycript.org for
some example code; and I now wish I had finished putting up the new fancier
website I was working on a few weeks ago ;P). If I supported something like
this on desktop systems (along with the other arguably-simpler things, such as
the embeddable browser), would that be valuable help for this problem space?

~~~
piranha
Cycript definitely looks very interesting. :) I could just put nice JS api on
top of ObjC calls, which makes it just perfect for writing apps. :)

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ThomasAylott
If you want features, be sure to check out <https://github.com/rsms/cocui>

I made this thing to add a quick UI to some shell scripts. This is not
intended to be a serious project for desktop app development. Just a utility
for nerds.

~~~
shawnjan8
Funny, I was just going to learn Cocoa so I could do just this. I will try
this out once finals are over :)

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mambodog
If you are building desktop apps with web app technologies, you are really
making compromises on a lot of important areas (native UI, responsiveness,
runtime footprint, respecting platform conventions[1]). I can understand
forgoing all of that, if doing so at least buys you broad cross-platform
support.

However in the case of platform-specific projects such as this, you're not
even getting that.

[1] <http://readthefuckinghig.tumblr.com/>

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sleepyhead
From the readme:

"Similar Projects

<https://github.com/rsms/cocui> is probly better in every imaginable way."

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jjcm
Are there screenshots that are readily available?

~~~
barredo
Here you go <http://cl.ly/0c1D0g06133B0V3n1u1z>

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randall
Awesome. I was just thinking I needed this for a new project.

Assuming it's Webkit under the hood... right? IE Safari-ish.

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catshirt
how does this compare to Titanium? [1] i'd research myself, but there's not
much to look at.

[1] [http://www.appcelerator.com/products/titanium-desktop-
applic...](http://www.appcelerator.com/products/titanium-desktop-application-
development/)

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danishkhan
This is really cool. I've been wanting to mess around with HTML5 for a mac app

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wavephorm
I feel this, like PhoneGap, this is a tremendous regression in web
development. Just build web apps, stop with all this native/web hybrid
nonsense.

~~~
ceejayoz
It's a direct response to the failure of browsers to include API hooks into
what has become basic and essential device functionality - camera access, for
example.

