Consider using a web-based ui

[jacksonrl]

I tried looking for discussion about this but didn't find anything. The idea is to use the browser itself to render the UI. Firefox already does this, and you can view the UI via chrome://browser/content/browser.xhtml

Chromium has also been testing this with an experimental feature called Webium. https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/90d4edc9bee2fe376f6f1114ac38ea9b52b61d5e

Vivaldi apparently uses React for their UI: https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-on-desktop-6-2/

As for why such a feature could be valuable:

There are many more people familiar with web technologies than with QT, so it could attract more contributors, and it could make the initial development environment setup process easier by removing the dependency on QT.

Additionally, a stated goal of Ladybird is to be able to maintain a web browser sustainably (as in, with less funding). Having to maintain multiple UIs makes that more difficult (of course still possible). That said, I know that MacOS/iOS users do generally prefer native UIs, so perhaps it would make sense to keep that (or not, I don't know).

The fact that Chromium is working on this shows perhaps that there is some benefit to this.

Lastly, a native UI would make porting Ladybird to some other architecture/OS easier (I suppose, maybe not).

Interested to hear what Ladybird contributors think.

tags for others searching: WebUI dogfood UI native UI

[AtkinsSJ]

I don't know if it's recorded anywhere, but matching each platform as well as possible is a goal. (This is in contrast with most browsers, which look the same everywhere and don't care much about platform conventions.) Implementing the UI with web technologies makes that a lot harder.

[trflynn89]

Right, we are sticking with un-apologetically native looking UIs for now.

[jacksonrl]

Can I ask why a native look is a goal? I don't necessarily disagree, just curios.

@trflynn89 What would this mean for Windows? Genuinely, I don't know what a native UI looks like on Windows. Microsoft develops 3 different UI toolkits currently (WinUI 3, WPF, WinForms) and has had multiple design systems (fluentUI, Areo etc.), Many (most?) major apps on windows don't even use any of them. Just some random apps I checked:

Maya3D: QT; LibreOffice: VCL; VLC: QT; VS code: chromium; notepad++ uses the win32 api directly; IntelliJ: Java Swing. Adobe acrobat does seem to use one of the native Windows UIs; apparently Zoom uses QT.

Basically many apps look different in some way on Windows. I think this is somewhat the case on Android as well. This said, I don't really have any problem with QT, in fact I do like the QT apps I have.

Another point I would add is that a web UI would let users create custom themes more easily.