What is Ultralight and what are its top alternatives?
Ultralight is a lightweight HTML rendering engine designed for games and applications on desktop operating systems. It offers fast rendering speeds, efficient resource usage, and support for modern web technologies like CSS and JavaScript. However, Ultralight has limitations in terms of community support and documentation, making it challenging for developers who are new to the platform.
- Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF): CEF is a powerful open-source framework for embedding Chromium-based web browsers into applications. It offers extensive features and customization options, but can be more resource-intensive compared to Ultralight.
- Electron: Electron is a popular framework for building cross-platform desktop applications using web technologies. It provides a rich set of APIs and tools for creating feature-rich applications, but may have higher memory usage compared to Ultralight.
- Awesomium: Awesomium is a software library for creating web-based applications and games. It offers easy integration with existing codebases and supports various operating systems, but may lack some of the performance optimizations found in Ultralight.
- Qt WebEngine: Qt WebEngine is a module in the Qt framework that provides a web rendering engine based on Chromium. It offers a high level of integration with Qt applications and supports modern web standards, but may come with a larger overhead compared to Ultralight.
- Webview: Webview is a lightweight library for creating web-based desktop applications. It is easy to integrate and offers a simple API for rendering web content, but may lack some of the advanced features found in Ultralight.
- EdgeHTML: EdgeHTML is the web rendering engine used in legacy versions of Microsoft Edge browser. It provides good compatibility with web standards and supports modern technologies, but may not offer as much customization as Ultralight.
- Sciter: Sciter is a lightweight and high-performance HTML/CSS rendering engine primarily designed for desktop applications. It offers a small footprint and fast rendering speeds, but may have limited community support compared to Ultralight.
- IUP: IUP is a multi-platform toolkit for building native graphical interfaces using web technologies. It provides a simple API for embedding web content into applications, but may lack some of the modern features and optimizations found in Ultralight.
- gtk webview: gtk webview is a component that allows developers to embed web content into GTK applications. It integrates well with GTK-based interfaces and provides good performance, but may not offer as many advanced features as Ultralight.
- Tauri: Tauri is a modern framework for building desktop applications with web technologies. It focuses on security, performance, and ease of use, making it a promising alternative to Ultralight for certain projects.
Top Alternatives to Ultralight
- Electron
With Electron, creating a desktop application for your company or idea is easy. Initially developed for GitHub's Atom editor, Electron has since been used to create applications by companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Slack, and Docker. The Electron framework lets you write cross-platform desktop applications using JavaScript, HTML and CSS. It is based on io.js and Chromium and is used in the Atom editor. ...
- JavaFX
It is a set of graphics and media packages that enables developers to design, create, test, debug, and deploy rich client applications that operate consistently across diverse platforms. ...
- pygame
It is a cross-platform set of Python modules designed for writing video games. It includes computer graphics and sound libraries designed to be used with the Python programming language. ...
- Qt5
It is a full development framework with tools designed to streamline the creation of applications and user interfaces for desktop, embedded, and mobile platforms. ...
- Element
Element is a Vue 2.0 based component library for developers, designers and product managers, with a set of design resources. ...
- Tauri
It is a framework for building tiny, blazing fast binaries for all major desktop platforms. Developers can integrate any front-end framework that compiles to HTML, JS and CSS for building their user interface. The backend of the application is a rust-sourced binary with an API that the front-end can interact with. ...
- SDL
It is a cross-platform development library designed to provide low level access to audio, keyboard, mouse, joystick, and graphics hardware via OpenGL and Direct3D. ...
- JUCE
It is a C++ framework for low-latency applications, with cross-platform GUI libraries to get your apps running on Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android. ...
Ultralight alternatives & related posts
- Easy to make rich cross platform desktop applications69
- Open source53
- Great looking apps such as Slack and Visual Studio Code14
- Because it's cross platform8
- Use Node.js in the Main Process4
- Uses a lot of memory18
- User experience never as good as a native app8
- No proper documentation4
- Does not native4
- Each app needs to install a new chromium + nodejs1
- Wrong reference for dom inspection1
related Electron posts
The Slack desktop app was originally written us the MacGap framework, which used Apple’s WebView to host web content inside of a native app frame. As this approach continued to present product limitations, Slack decided to migrate the desktop app to Electron. Electron is a platform that combines the rendering engine from Chromium and the Node.js runtime and module system. The desktop app is written as a modern ES6 + async/await React application.
For the desktop app, Slack takes a hybrid approach, wherein some of the assets ship as part of the app, but most of their assets and code are loaded remotely.
Slack's new desktop application was launched for macOS. It was built using Electron for a faster, frameless look with a host of background improvements for a superior Slack experience. Instead of adopting a complete-in-box approach taken by other apps, Slack prefers a hybrid approach where some of the assets are loaded as part of the app, while others are made available remotely. Slack's original desktop app was written using the MacGap v1 framework using WebView to host web content within the native app frame. But it was difficult to upgrade with new features only available to Apple's WKWebView and moving to this view called for a total application rewrite.
Electron brings together Chromium's rendering engine with the Node.js runtime and module system. The new desktop app is now based on an ES6 + async/await React application is currently being moved gradually to TypeScript. Electron functions on Chromium's multi-process model, with each Slack team signed into a separate process and memory space. It also helps prevent remote content to directly access desktop features using a feature called WebView Element which creates a fresh Chromium renderer process and assigns rendering of content for its hosting renderer. Additional security can be ensured by preventing Node.js modules from leaking into the API surface and watching out for APIs with file paths. Communication between processes on Electron is carried out via electron-remote, a pared-down, zippy version of Electron's remote module, which makes implementing the web apps UI much easier.
- Light10
- Community support less than qt1
- Complicated1
related JavaFX posts
I create desktop applications that use a database for storing data. My applications are used as management tools in supermarkets, stores, warehouses, and other places. I don't know which one to use; Electron or JavaFX. Can anyone advise me on this matter?
pygame
- Easy to install3
- Simple1
- Lightweigt by only being 12 mb1
- Has only 2d2
- Slow1
related pygame posts
- Easy to learn and use2
- Cross platform2
- Open source2
- C++2
- Very good documentation2
- Fast enough2
related Qt5 posts
- Very complete solution3
- Buggy in parts2
related Element posts
Tauri
related Tauri posts
- Actively being worked on2
- Cross-platform1
- Fast1
- No GUI support1
related SDL posts
JUCE
- Cross platform4
- Fast2
- Pure C++ code1
- Open Source1
- Performance1
- Nice GUI1
- Free Edition has Made with Juce2