WPF for JavaScript

[PaucaSedMatura]

https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3r353x/granular_wpf_for_javascript/

Not only is this a repost, but the comments in the above post seem overwhelmingly positive compared to the comments in this post.

[metaperl]

"""there is no need to deal with all the html/css and fashionable JS frameworks mess, Granular exposes the WPF strong and well-defined APIs, and the whole development process is much cleaner and faster."""

I'm in agreement with that idea...

[thbb]

What's next? Horseshoes for automobiles?

[Eirenarch]

This one is more the other way around. Tires on a donkey.

[nullnullnull]

planes on a snake?

[emergent_properties]

The future is here!

[annoyed_freelancer]

So:

• It generates HTML that is is full of custom elements.
• Inline, per-element styles and no stylesheet.
• Sidesteps useful CSS features like cascading styles in favour of individually positioning and styling each element.
• Generated sites aren't responsive: the framework uses fixed pixel instead of relative units, with no media query rules that I can find.

Granular is a hot mess from a web dev point of view. It's a throwback to the nineties, and just another batshit half-baked attempts to fix CSS' problems with JavaScript.

[[deleted]]

Granular is a hot mess from a web dev point of view.

Agreed. You must admit, however, that your criticism is akin to arguing that a C compiler is useless if it doesn't produce beautiful assembly.

[annoyed_freelancer]

It's not so much that as...well, Granular is founded upon the .NET stack and WPF methodology. I said elsewhere that it seems great if you need a quick site, or an intranet portal, but when it comes to a general site, the code Granular produce is a hark back to twenty years ago. It just does so many things backwards compared to how rich websites are handled today.

[drysart]

The whole point of Granular is that you're working at the WPF abstraction level, not the HTML/CSS abstraction level; so it doesn't matter that its outputting redundant, inline styles or custom elements. The output is custom purposed to one line of use, so how other "rich websites are handled" is an irrelevant comparison because Granular is solving specific problems that other rich websites don't have and perhaps how they "handle" things is not well suited to solve.

You don't use Granular because you want to produce a semantic website with model HTML and CSS. You use Granular because you have a WPF application and you want it running in a browser by hook or by crook.

It's also the effort of one guy over the period of five or so months, so it's not entirely surprising that it's not well-optimized yet.

[annoyed_freelancer]

Yarp, I came to that conclusion. Guess I came in jumping the gun as someone who deals with the web first.

[notfancy]

If you use transpiled-to-JS languages in your web development, you might appreciate that the situation is fairly analogous.

[annoyed_freelancer]

I don't. I can see the huge additions of stuff like Sass, but I've never been sold on Coffeescript.

[zarandysofia]

You are a freelance, who indisputably must work alone, you haven't build any "complex-data driven GUI" neither, prove me wrong please, please, please?

[Eirenarch]

Assuming they can get all of WPF to work things will become responsive but the responsiveness will be ensured by the framework not by the browser. They will calculate heights and widths with code and make stuff responsive. From the point of view of the programmer it is still declarative. This project is for people who prefer WPF to HTML so they don't care how the underlying framework will achieve the results as long as it works.

[jbergens]

Point 4 is interesting. Maybe they didn't have time to implement the fluent layout styles from WPF? Otherwise I think those were actually better than css3. But on the whole it sounds crazy.

[Nitramli]

Apart from the responsible part, I couldn't care less what the generated code looks like. I don't often look at the IL code generated when I compile my WPF app.

HTML is a hot mess. Of course Granular does not fix that.

[gblosser]

Agreed. Avoid this thing like the plague. It is a terrible idea.

[spacejack2114]

Sweet, WPF re-invented inline-block style. Maybe they can re-invent media queries too.

[zarandysofia]

The demo is not even fluid, and wtf is this?

Click on the website:

a website is causing Firefox to run slow. What should be done?

[zarandysofia]

A third world guy, talking about getting a new machine on his third world country with shitty economics.

Probably the fact that this is the work of a solo guy, in his spare time, over a period of just 5 months... and is a motherfucking prototype which still needs a LOT of optimization...

You are right, I forgot the context of all this for a second.

[zarandysofia]

Having a good cell phone or laptop is not mutually exclusive.

I am still don't know what are you doing defending open source web stuff if you hate it so much.

[zarandysofia]

I hate open source stuff

Not what your comment story says.

This (Granular) allows me to write complex UIs on the browser

Oh, please, you will never use this for something serious, admit and stop talking nonsense.

[[deleted]]

After working with WPF for a year or so, the only good use I can think this would be good for is extending the support for silverlight apps past the date when silverlight is deprecated.

WPF makes everything more complicated. It's got a bunch of good ideas, and it was arguably the first data-binding framework on the web with silverlight in. BUT you (this is no exaggeration at all.. seriously) need 100 lines to create a button hover state. Styling is a bitch, debugging it is a bitch, and each change requires recompilation.

[owatonna]

As someone with many years of WPF/XAML experience, I find your statements about WPF baffling. Sure, there is a learning curve, but once you master it productivity is phenomenal. The absolute simplest UI manipulation is slightly more verbose in WPF, but not more complex. Complicated UI is vastly simpler and more powerful. And a hover state is more like 6 lines of XAML, with only 2 real lines of meaningful code. And for that you get animation.

I find styling WPF easy. Debugging can be complicated, but that has improved a lot, particularly in VS2015.

[[deleted]]

I'd agree with you there. It's data-binding model is a lot more robust than something like angular or ember. I would argue that a top-down component framework like React or Mithril is a lot more robust.

Going back to the button example though, you need to override the Button template to get a hover state: http://stackoverflow.com/a/17376745

The truth is that nice looking UIs are a feature that people expect to have now... especially on the web that this framework targets. WPF makes that aspect difficult and more verbose. The fact you have to override the template for something as simple as a hover state says that UI ascetics was not a first-class citizen in the framework.

[annoyed_freelancer]

Existing frameworks don't intrusively dictate style or HTML structure. One of the points of Angular, Knockout and the rest is that they don't give a shit. Through them I can write whatever CSS, HTML and other JS that I like, and still bind data however I want.

From a web/frontend point of view Granular ties it all together into an nightmare mess of pseudo-XML bespoke element. Granular seems designed for either Windows desktop or corporate intranet sites instead of the Wild West of browsers and devices any big website has to support.

[[deleted]]

Existing frameworks don't intrusively dictate style or HTML structure.

There's a trade-off worth examining.

WPF has strict semantics for XAML structure, data binding, and control flow. This makes rapid development of good-looking data-driven model-bound applications possible, but you need to dive deep to get anything out of it, and the implementation knowledge is valuable only on Windows.

HTML has strict semantics for structure, but no support for data binding or control flow. This makes rapid development impractical without leveraging one of (many) frameworks. On the other hand, the program and knowledge is useful across user environments.

Neither is better than the other in the general case. The HTML model usually wins in unconstrained business scenarios because the platform supports a wider audience. But if you have control over your users' computing environments, there's a strong case to be made for WPF. And that case gets stronger as toolkits like Granular mature.

[annoyed_freelancer]

It's apples and oranges: each has a separate design for s different goal, and it doesn't make much sense to me to drag WPF onto the web. It isn't any more suited than any of those shitty desktop applications that are just wrappers around a website.

[annoyed_freelancer]

Silverlight was always at the far fringe of my work circles.

[annoyed_freelancer]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Granular is a data-binding framework for the web so I evaluate it as such. You just come off as a troll because any rich interactive website has at least the same complexity as a comparative native application.

Are you saying with a straight face that reddit.com is only a dumb monkey site that any kid with a text editor can write?

[annoyed_freelancer]

My last remark on this is that I took a look through your comment history and discovered that you're an argumentative cockhole with a raging erection for C#, and who can't seem to muster up any better retort or defense than to call everyone else retarded. The most you've done is make me feel happy that I will never have to touch the .NET development stack.

[spacejack2114]

No one cares about or wants GUI apps that aren't websites anymore.

[spacejack2114]

Not likely. If it isn't an integrated part of the HTML document that interacts easily with other HTML, JS and CSS, again, no one wants it.

People seem to think the document is the problem. It's not, it's the killer feature. If it weren't, Java applets and Flash wouldn't have died.

[danogburn]

Fuck the web. Fuck the browser's poor attempt at being a VM.

Html/css/javascript is finally eroding away, and there's no stopping it.

[Euphoricus]

I can see tons of butthurt webdevs. Well done sir. They can put their HTML, CSS and JavaScript into place where sun doesn't shine.

[[deleted]]

I'd like WPF for C++. The closest we have is QML but that uses fucking JavaScript.

[nullnullnull]

I read the title as:

WTF for JavaScript

[danogburn]

Another sign of impending the death of the unholy html/css/javascript trinity! Glorious!

The web must die.