MacGap: Desktop WebKit wrapper for HTML/CSS/JS applications | Hacker News Reader

JS applications

github.com

144 pointsmaccman35 comments

I'm building a framework some what like this but maybe better for some use cases.

It's still a work in progress but it's part of my tinderbox application.

It embeds a node.js server in the background (soon it will embed a custom Node server were I forked libev to use libdispatch on the mac and run behind inside a secure XPC server that launchd will manage on the Mac). Then using a Unix socket, it serves up through a custom webkit protocol handler. Two way communication to the frontend from a custom webserver written in Cocoa.

Instead of going down the road of trying to write Cocoa code with Javascript, instead just surface what you need as you need to your own backend. It's abstract so that it can be reused in other applications on other platforms in the future. Node.js was a good solution because it offers sandboxing and eventbased IO which for my first use case (Campfire) made prefect sense.

Doing this kind of binding with a generated kind of interface is always going to keep fighting an abstraction. (Like fighting some C++ lib you wrapped and are trying access through SWIG). My approach you just use the tool best suited for the job and embrace both Cocoa and Javascript.

I'm wondering what it would take to run your project on an old, jailbroken iPhone with a static IP on my LAN. Have you tried this?

Sitting next to the developer of MacGap (we both work at Twitter), the first thing that I asked was "what about Fluid?" http://fluidapp.com/ -- and Alex's first retort was that this was open source, and free.

"MacGap was forked/ported from Phonegap-mac. It's under the same license (MIT)."

I'm more curious why he forked Phonegap-mac?

It's a good point, but I felt that it was enough of a code change to fork - and callback-mac wasn't getting that much love (or accepting pull requests). However, it may be that that project gets merged back in, as I might be made the official maintainer.

I'm curious why Mozilla's Prism (XUL Runner) wouldn't be a candidate for forking in a project like this since it would allow for cross-platform (Windows/ Linux support)?

Fluid is just a browser that opens to a specific URL, there is no way to distribute with it (aside from just publishing a webapp).

Actually, back in the pre-1.0 versions, you could.

See the archived changelog here: http://www.myosxfreeware.com/fluid-04/

Specifically "FluidInstance.app: SSBs can now run local Ruby on Rails webapps."

There used to be a way to package up a RoR app inside the application contents and distribute that as your app. No need for an actual hosted website.

However - the feature was poorly documented and never really taken advantage of. Since they went 1.0, I believe it's also been removed.

Fluid is great, but can be verrrrrrry buggy. I know the developer that makes it, and he's a great guy. I've been waiting for someone to put out a more solid replacement and hopefully this is it.

Raven isn't bad - some prefer it over Fluid. I don't, but I still think it's a solid replacement.

http://raven.io/

I've tried a lot of WebKit wrappers and the #1 problem is WebKit alone doesn't have things like a hardware accelerated canvas, audio support, WebGL, etc. etc. - basically a whole lot of stuff on the browser layer rather than the layout layer. This makes them totally useless for HTML5 games!

It does, you just have to enable it (private interface). Just tell me what you need that's not working, and I'll enable it.

LocalStorage seems broken on the mac which makes it a bad platform to develop webkit apps in. (It does not persist across program runs)

In fact, if either websql or localstorage worked in cocoa webkit it would be great.

Yes, this looks like just a bug. You can definitely get localStorage to persist data between instantiations. I'll fix it.

Fixed now.

thanks a lot, I can finally get off Appcelerator!

Does something like this exist for windows?

Yes, https://github.com/davejohnson/phonegap-windows

You can easily embedd internet explorer frames in winforms and WPF. If you're using Visual studio its almost a drag and drop affair. To gain things like system wide notifications you will need to use interop to get to the win32 libs, but its fairly straight forward and well documented.

As far as I'm aware (and I'm speculating from articles I've read) is that full support for HTML apps is coming in Windows 8.

EDIT: or just use the other link provided in the other comment which has webkit support :)

dare I say Adobe Air?

I does exist...

appcelerator titanium, i'd guess - http://www.appcelerator.com/

Titanium desktop has the feel of being abandoned - even if not officially the case. For anything non-trivial, you're entering a world of hurt.

I've had more luck with the QtWebKit Bridge: http://doc.qt.nokia.com/4.7-snapshot/qtwebkit-bridge.html than other options (primarily Titanium).

It's a bit more complicated and requires you to get familiar with Qt's paradigms for things like resource management (I'm still struggling with how to access files outside a qrc), but it offers infinitely more flexibility by exposing the entirety of Qt (and C++) to you as needed.

For example, I wanted to write a frameless app with edge snapping. The two problems I ran across were:

- First, when expanding a window the mouse would leave the web widget and so Titanium would stop sending mouse events (as it should). To fix that I had to wrap my content and center it in a larger transparent <body> and then account for that in the movement code. Ugly, but do able.

- And then, edge snapping on the other hand is impossible. Titanium doesn't handle multiple monitors very well. In-order to get the dimensions of a desktop you've dragged into you have to drop it first and even then it's relative to the upper left corner of the primary display.

I realize these are very specific issues but they're trivial in Qt (I handle resizing and dragging in Qt so mouse position is no longer an issue, and QDesktop is extremely straightforward).

Furthermore, not every library is available in Javascript so it can be useful to fall back to C++. I'm still using mustache.js for templating but I won't be using Strophe.js for my jabber library, I can instead use quicker C++ power library (I'd like to use libpurple but that's a whole other mess itself).