Cross platform web app solutions

A discovery list of technical solutions to produce a desktop and/or mobile app using web technologies.

Apparently (all this is quite new to me) most solutions embed NodeJS inside them, making executing JavaScript the easiest part of the problem.

Real trouble comes when talking about the UI, since each OS has different ways of rendering UI. Several solutions exist to make the programs multiplateform.

Node and Webkit solutions

Those solutions package webkot (chromium) and nodejs inside the app and make it work as a fake app on the desktop. Works well but comes with a lot of bloat and heavy ram consumption.

• Electron is made by Github
• NW.js is made by Intel

Overall both are in the same family but they are differences between NW.js and Electron.

Node and existing UI frameworks

Since bringing chromium makes the program very big, there are solutions to bridge between web apps and existing, lighter UI frameworks. Most of the time then, the framework is used to create a bridge between HTML/CSS and the existing frameworks components, modules or UI API.

• NodeGui provides a bridge between HTML/CSS and QT.

Node and webviews

Since all OSes can render webview, it's possible to ask for one at the OS level by providing a bridge. The problem with this solution might be that if the OS has an outdated webview engine, all modern HTML/CSS/JS solutions might not work?

• Tauri
• Neutralino
• Deno webview

Except for neutralino, most projects of this type tends to use webview, a C/C++/Go library. Several bindings library for other languages already exist.

Others

• Sciter is a binary that can be used to create web apps. But under the hood it's using a superset of JavaScript called TIScript
• Sciter JS seems to be Sciter but with common JavaScript, using the quick JS engine.