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I never said it wasn't cross platform. I said it's development and use was pretty exclusive to iOS these days; outside of less common browsers like GNOME Web.


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Yeah, IMO the cross platform tools are mainly designed for apps that aren't doing hard/uncommon things. Which is a lot of them to be fair.

You forgot portability. Web apps by default are cross platform.

I've lost count of how many Windows-only and these days even MacOS-only apps I've seen. Similar story for Android or iOS.


I'm certainly not trying to define "cross-platform" to mean "the web." I'm just pointing out that the web is a huge platform and for many use cases is arguably the most platform for a cross-platform GUI framework to support.

Agreed. It’s not really “cross-platform” if they take their own platform with them and implement it everywhere, and then all apps built with that toolkit are identical everywhere as a result.

Lots of apps aren't cross platform, at least on mobile. Things 3 is a good example that's only on Apple platforms.

Fair point. I tend to not like those cross-platform apps because of their generally-degraded performance so my previous comment showed a bit of my underlying bias.

It's more a cross platform UI tooklkit built around web standards.

As I said, that's not what people mean when they talk about "cross platform" in this context. Go to phonegap and see if they support PC. Cross platform means you should write once and it works everywhere without modifying anything, just like the web. But you can't be cross platform AND native on completely different types of platforms, since each has its own distinct feature sets. You are free to believe whatever you want but that doesn't really mean anything since you're basically arguing about something that I'm not even talking about.

To be fair , so is React Native, calling itself cross platform but not running on Windows ( not even sure it runs on Linux either, AFAIK it's mac only ).

I hate to cherry-pick, but the comment on cross-platformness being a developer issue isn't always the case. I use Linux for everything, and an app being cross-platform increases the likelihood that I can use it.

Windows and Mac users are typically catered for.


That's cross platform for Windows, Mac and Linux, but what about Web, Android and iOS?

The good thing about everything being a web app is that it's inherently cross-platform. /s

> or choose to use something like React Native

Finally took a look, and this appears to be mobile only. Certainly covers one definition of cross-platform, but a little different than the other toolkits we've discussed.


That sounds nothing like “true cross-platform GUI” to me.

I'm a strong advocate for writing platform agnostic code. My point was being cross platform is irrelevant to making something user friendly or secure.

“It works the same on the desktop as it does in my web browser” is an indictment, not a feature. People use cross-platform toolkits because they don’t want to do the work to fit in with the platform their user chose, not because they confer any advantages to the user.

I'm OK with that. What does cross platform even mean? Windows, Linux, OSX? Maybe Android and iOS?

It's still easier than rewriting all of the development tools, libraries, etc in javascript and for the browser, and your app will be responsive and fast.


But this UI is not cross platform either, as it is still using proprietary APIs.

Which is a shame. Cross platform GUI development is really a pain point that could use some attention.
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