Now I kinda want to reinvent web pages with a reduced set of functions to make it easier to use native elements across platforms and focus on user theming.
Maybe wasm blobs with a minimal DOM API?
@mauve sounds akin to something like #NativeScript?
I feel like a killjoy but based on my experience with such frameworks, I'd kinda encourage you not to. For *very* simple apps ok maybe they have some utility, but every time I use one (also add Appcelerator Titanium & Ionic to this list) I end up being constrained by limiting / buggy functionality and thin wrappers around native code.
@pospi Yeah that makes sense. Especially when NativeScript tries to expose platform-specific code.
I found React-Native wasn't too bad for the sorts of apps I was making, though we often had to dip into platform-specific native modules which I'd like to avoid as much as possible.
IMO I'm hoping to enable really basic and shitty web app use cases, kinda like the early web (but client-side processed instead of backend).
What sorts of apps were you trying to make with it?
@pospi Yeah that's defs the most annoying part.
I was hoping to go about this by looking at how web apis do things and starting from there.
So it might not have full access to the hardware, but maybe you can get a few standard things.
Like, in even smaller scope than Java promised back in the day.
@mauve hmm yeah things of various complexity. I recall reaching for features like control over the GPS accuracy, flaky camera / mic access, specialised compositing. As you'd expect the coarseness comes out in the areas that have divergent APIs between different platforms and hardware vendors.