[madrox]

Between electron, webassembly, and other technologies, I don't think the line between web app and native app is as clear as it used to be, especially relative lift and performance. In the end, the only difference may be "one is launched in a browser and one is launched from the start menu"

[blacklion]

It is very clear: are ALL controls which could be standard (provided by native OS toolkit) really standard (and respect system theming, customization, etc) and are ALL keyboard shortucts and other behaviors of OS standard toolkit supported? I don't care are code is native (as in compiled ahead of time / just in time / interpreted), but I'm care for behaviors and it consistency, both across one app and whole system.

I'm forced to use Slack at $job, and it is awful, for example. Some text fields looks as text fields and are used as text fields, but don't respect "Shift+End/Home/Arrows" keyboard commands. Other does. It is annoying as hell. It is Electron.

Even more «native» toolkits, like GTK and QT are have small discrepancies. Simple example: my Windows has English MUI (interface language) but Russian locale (time and date format, etc). In POSIX terms it is something like LC_MESSAGES=en_GB & LC_ALL=ru_RU (according to POSIX more specific categories have priority over LC_ALL). 95% of both QT-based and GTK-based software with translation to Russian speak Russian to me (and if I'm lucky has setting somewhere to enforce English). They think that «(system language)» is Russian. But it is not! It is not very «native», IMHO. Ok, GTK-based software is typicality build via cygwin/mingw, so it is really not very native and is «hacked» to run on Windows, but most of QT-based software IS build for Windows, as Windows is fully supported, tier 1 platform for QT. But still.

If I start to write down all small nitpicks about cross-platform software, which shows that it it not native, I could find many in any cross-platform software. Corner cases in keyboard shortcuts, non-copyable messageboxes, strange tab behaviors, non-standard open/save/print dialogs, etc, etc, etc. If you use platform for 25+ years (yes, Windows changed a lot from 3.11 for Workgroups which was my first version, but these changes were small ones, step-by-step, and A LOT of things in UX didn't change still!), you have a shitton of muscle memory and all these nitpicks throw you off.

Yes, I know, that there is no "native" toolkit for Linux. IMHO, it is a big problem, much bigger, that all problems of X11 which Wayland want to solve.

[WA]

I agree, the controls and OS integration are what makes the most difference in the whole debate. But: Why aren't there native controls in the browser? Why do they suck?

> Even more «native» toolkits, like GTK and QT are have small discrepancies.

And then there is truly native stuff and you still have discrepancies like bugs that make you write your own UI kits, recently witnessed here:

https://nova.app/

> Here's a little editor story for fun. During beta we found some bugs in Apple's text layout engine that we just could not fix. Our solution? Writing our own text layout manager… from scratch.

That is a great example for Panic's dedication and at the same time a sane argument for doing cross-platform development, if you can't even trust the truly native libraries.