Non-Form based Apps

[lambertlb]

I have been looking for a UI to work on top the many languages i use such as C++, C#, Java, and Python. Modern browsers contain the functionality I need so WebUI sounds promising. I have looked through the posted code but I don't see that it might be flexible enough to do all the things I require. For example could I make a App similar to Google maps. Basically have small icons on top a large image and have it support Zoom and Pan using both mouse controls and touch screen gestures? I have done this with JavaScript but would like to do this in other languages. A small example showing the zooming and panning of an image without using JavaScript at all would be nice. If I am forced to write JavaScript to do certain things I might as well do the entire thing in JavaScript :)

[AlbertShown]

WebUI is simple and promising, it's a simple library that loads a web browser for you, and connect the UI to your backend language, then you can execute JavaScript from your backend language if you want. The mean goal here is to show a web browser window, that's it. WebUI have no control at all over the window content.

If your map project can be fully done in HTML+JavaScript, then you can work first in developing your project in a regular web browser without using WebUI at all, when your project is done, you can for example use WebUI virtual_file_system example in C to convert your whole HTML/JS project into one single portable executable file.

[lambertlb]

Thanks, I guess my expectations are too high. For many years i have yearned for a universal UI that could be used on top of most popular languages. Browsers have everything needed to do that but, due to security issues, keep from exposing it. Functionally i have done similar things to Webui by using python to create a web service that you can run locally and have it call up the browser. Python makes this trivially easy. The advantage though is that it could be moved to private network server and be shared locally with other computers. I have also played with Qt5 that tries to standardize a UI allowing it to be used on top of many languages but just doesn't have the flexibility and styling of a normal Browser UI. Thanks again, sorry about the digression

[AlbertShown]

Yes, I agree with you, web browsers are very sophisticated, and they are the best choice for UI.

About Python private network web server, you can check out this good C example public_network_access, it shows how to identify UI of a specific client (visitor) and update its own UI, and also shows how to update something once for all connected clients (visitors). There not yet a Python example but APIs are similar, you can see the C APIs call and do the same in Python.

However, later, after WebUI 2.5.0 get released, we will create a lot of examples in all wrappers including Python.

[AlbertShown]

A small example showing the zooming and panning of an image without using JavaScript at all would be nice

About adding APIs to control UI in WebUI, this is not planned at all, we want to keep WebUI a simple web browser GUI library, while the content of UI, it's fully outside WebUI.

Another reason is even if we add image zoom API, we still have thousands and thousands other useful APIs to add... However, all those APIs can be simply and easily accessed now by the developer using JavaScript in UI and from backend.