It's pretty clear to me that JavaScript is becoming the de facto standard for UI/UX programming, regardless of platform, and regardless of web vs. native targets. Even GNOME has JavaScript bindings. [0]

[0]: https://gjs.guide/

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andoando 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Personally I love it. HTML/CSS is still the best, most well documented and familiar gui framework

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ranger_danger 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The problem is performance... requiring a web browser to draw a UI takes a LOT of CPU and memory, and not all devices have enough power to deliver a smooth experience across all potential workloads.

I worry that every year we keep increasing our processing requirements and bloat without good reason for it.

Why should every Windows release require a faster and faster CPU, and more and more RAM?

The recommended amount of memory for Windows 95 was 8 megabytes, and for Windows 11 it is 8 gigabytes. Why is this not horrifying?

My small Linux system with openbox GUI barely cracks 100MB memory usage in 2025.

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Rohansi 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> requiring a web browser to draw a UI takes a LOT of CPU and memory

What makes a browser so much more inefficient vs. other UI frameworks? Is it really the browser's fault or the website's you're visiting?

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4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

[deleted]

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troupo an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

What makes the browser slow and inefficient is the fact that it's not a UI framework. It's a system to display text and a couple of images on a 2D plane where every element depends on every other element.

Almost every single interaction and change requires the browser to recalculate the layout of the entire page and to redraw it. It's basically Microsoft Word, with nearly the same behaviors.

And there are no proper ways to prevent that behaviour. No lower and low level control over rendering. Awkward workarounds and hacks that browsers employ to try and minimize re-layouting and redrawing. Great rejoicing when introducing yet more hacks for basic things: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/css-ui/animate-to-height-a... etc.

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Rohansi 24 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> It's a system to display text and a couple of images on a 2D plane

And how is that different from a UI framework?

> Almost every single interaction and change requires the browser to recalculate the layout of the entire page and to redraw it.

What UI frameworks don't do this?

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wiseowise an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

That’s just plain wrong, even ChatGPT will rebuke your comment. I’m sure someone working on Blink/WebKit will just laugh at your comment.

	▲	troupo an hour ago \| parent [-]
		"even ChatGPT" lol Here's a deeper dive. It's about animations, but it explains issues in a nice way that "even ChatGPT" can understand: https://motion.dev/blog/web-animation-performance-tier-list

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shooly 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Why should every Windows release require a faster and faster CPU, and more and more RAM?

I don't know. But does it? It doesn't seem like you verified that yourself - you're comparing stated recommended specs of Windows to actual usage of Linux.

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edoceo 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There are slim webviews, that can do core HTML and CSS, make a nice UI and not chew all the RAM.

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samdoesnothing 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Have you used other ones? Not a dig, I've primarily used HTML/CSS for UIs and have been playing around with Compose recently and haven't made up my mind what I like more.

	▲	nish__ 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Same here. I've grown to really love Jetpack Compose. Personally, I'd say I like it better than any other framework I've tried before.

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NooneAtAll3 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

html/css yes

js? get that thing off of me

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arvinsim 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Atwood's law strikes again[0]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Atwood

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ranger_danger 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

From what I have seen, most of the current GNOME UI is in fact just javascript. And any plugins people write for it are also javascript.

	▲	skydhash 26 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		GNOME has its own interpreter, kinda how React Native does it for mobile. But performance all boils down to the layout engine. Most native UI components take shortcuts with text which is the most difficult thing to render. And the widget tree is simpler. And there’s the whole inspector in web browser, meaning that the layout is not done once and forget. There’s various sub components still present for whatever features. Great in the browser, not great for standalone apps.