Not having any local/offline data is kind of a pain point for me. Besides this I was always interested in a simple way to build simple applications for the mobile end. The other solution was to go full Swift/XCode and focus on iOS/MacOS ; it is another beast to master.
How people develop small UI applications nowadays on mobile and desktop? On the web and basta?
I’ve found success with PWABuilder, as a non-mobile-fluent dev it works nicely with a web app setup. And if your app is already local-first (which, in an of itself is a world of complexity, but solvable using existing web tech) it plays well with offline as the app itself only needs to be “downloaded” on first load.
The problem with this is getting it past app store reviews because they consider webviews as nested apps that can deploy arbitrary changes without review - say someone hijacks your domain and swaps out the deployment to a malicious app, it would be loaded onto customer devices on next reload which is a valid concern.
There are some other providers which do the same thing but package all the assets into the app itself so your “mobile app” essentially becomes a tiny local web server that renders a webview, but I think this only works on android so it’s not really a proper solution.
Outside of that, React Native seems like the go-to (despite it apparently being permanently v0.x and constantly changing) but friends of mine who build apps for a living swear by it.
It’s kind of polarizing, but for relatively simple apps, I’ve found that Flutter (http://flutter.dev) is a pretty solid compromise. The language (Dart) has static types and other niceties, the performance is reasonable, and it ships with a bunch of useful UI components. It also builds for Android, iOS, web, and desktop (Mac, Linux, Windows).
Hypermedia systems, a book written by the creators of HTMX and Hyperview has a chapter specifically for Hyperview.
I can really recommend this book. It is easy to read and it made me understand both HTML and HTMX better. It made me question design decisions of the HTML spec that I had never thought of.
Not having any local/offline data is kind of a pain point for me. Besides this I was always interested in a simple way to build simple applications for the mobile end. The other solution was to go full Swift/XCode and focus on iOS/MacOS ; it is another beast to master.
How people develop small UI applications nowadays on mobile and desktop? On the web and basta?
I’ve found success with PWABuilder, as a non-mobile-fluent dev it works nicely with a web app setup. And if your app is already local-first (which, in an of itself is a world of complexity, but solvable using existing web tech) it plays well with offline as the app itself only needs to be “downloaded” on first load.
The problem with this is getting it past app store reviews because they consider webviews as nested apps that can deploy arbitrary changes without review - say someone hijacks your domain and swaps out the deployment to a malicious app, it would be loaded onto customer devices on next reload which is a valid concern.
There are some other providers which do the same thing but package all the assets into the app itself so your “mobile app” essentially becomes a tiny local web server that renders a webview, but I think this only works on android so it’s not really a proper solution.
Outside of that, React Native seems like the go-to (despite it apparently being permanently v0.x and constantly changing) but friends of mine who build apps for a living swear by it.
It’s kind of polarizing, but for relatively simple apps, I’ve found that Flutter (http://flutter.dev) is a pretty solid compromise. The language (Dart) has static types and other niceties, the performance is reasonable, and it ships with a bunch of useful UI components. It also builds for Android, iOS, web, and desktop (Mac, Linux, Windows).
Hypermedia systems, a book written by the creators of HTMX and Hyperview has a chapter specifically for Hyperview.
I can really recommend this book. It is easy to read and it made me understand both HTML and HTMX better. It made me question design decisions of the HTML spec that I had never thought of.