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Issue metadata

Status: WontFix
Owner:
Closed: Apr 2016
Cc:
Components:
EstimatedDays: ----
NextAction: ----
OS: All
Pri: 2
Type: Feature



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Ideas to borrow from Qt

Reported by trusktr@gmail.com, Apr 7 2016

Issue description

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_10_2) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/49.0.2623.110 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce the problem:
1. Try developing an app for the awesome Chromium browser.
2. Try developing an app with Qt.
3. Wish there was something like Qt's Creator but for Chromium development, including having control of the C++ side of things and being able to expose custom C++ interfaces via HTML and JavaScript (in comparison Qt allows exposing custom C++ interfaces be QML and JavaScript).
4. Wish even more that this Chromium IDE existed and would let one compile apps build with Chromium for native platforms (not just as web apps). In comparison, Qt lets us build everything, the whole stack, from the C++ side to the QML/JavaScript side, as a native application for the target platform. A Chromium IDE would compile Chromium in a similar manner, except that for native targets, much of the legacy HTML code be removed if it isn't being used in the app, unlike with web browsers that have to keep legacy behaviors for backwards compatibility so the web doesn't break.

What is the expected behavior?
That we can fire up Chromium IDE (or whatever it'll be called) and developamazing cross-platform "native" appliclications, not just "web apps". That the Chromium C++ API can be easy to extend, and for extensions to be easily exposable via HTML and JavaScript. Custom Elements is good for web apps, but obviously not as powerful as having direct control of C++ would be.

What went wrong?
This hasn't been made yet. I'd really love to see something like this!

Did this work before? No 

Chrome version: 49.0.2623.110  Channel: n/a
OS Version: OS X 10.10.2
Flash Version: Shockwave Flash 21.0 r0

Qt's QML+JavaScript environment is really similar to Chromium's HTML+JavaScript environment. Each have their strengths and weaknesses, but both are very similar in many regards. Qt has the upper hand in that the Qt Creator IDE makes writing native apps with the QML+JavaScript environment really simple, handling the build process, configuration, and packaging. Writing a native app using Chromium is a much more complicated task, requiring developers to get intimately familiar with Chromium's build processes and with packaging for each platform. The huge efforts spent there could be "re-used" in the form of an IDE, so that other developers could leverage it.

This idea would literally win. It'd give Qt a run for it's money, that's for sure.
 

Comment 1 by alph@chromium.org, Apr 11 2016

Cc: lushnikov@chromium.org
Labels: -Type-Bug -OS-Mac OS-All Type-Feature
Owner: paulir...@chromium.org
Status: Assigned (was: Unconfirmed)
Status: WontFix (was: Assigned)
Sounds pretty cool.

Our team is very much focused on web applications, rather than Chromium-based desktop applications. I too would appreciate a strong IDE for this experience, but I see more opportunity for another team to build such Authoring tools that could deploy to Electron (or another chromium wrapper)

E.g.
* https://github.com/cocos-creator/editor-framework
* http://photonkit.com/
* http://gabrielbull.github.io/react-desktop/
* http://montagestudio.com/
* http://developer.telerik.com/featured/desktop-apps-with-electron-and-kendo-ui/

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