Uniform - Lightweight UI toolkit with WASM layout and GPU rendering
Show HN: JavaScript web apps with WASM layout and GPU rendering in 280 KB
Uniform is a lightweight UI toolkit for building responsive, beautiful interfaces with pixel-perfect control. It replaces native UI tools with a C core that compiles to WASM on the web and native code elsewhere, enabling full web apps under 280 KB. With a JavaScript API for instant iteration and a C API for performance, it offers powerful constraint-based layout, SDF shapes for advanced effects, and low-latency input. Currently in preview for iOS, macOS, and web, Uniform empowers designers to implement any visual identity precisely.
Uniform does not have a visual identity. Instead, it makes it as easy as possible to express any visual identity.
- onion2k
What this needs is a demo of something that you can't do natively in a browser. Recreating HN is great, but it shows why it's not as good as HTML+CSS (slower, bigger, no native browser features). This sort of project has the potential to really demonstrate the power of WASM and WebGPU, but in something that's not a game.
You say frameworks "inherit the limitations of HTML/CSS", so show something that can be done when you don't have those limits.
- socalgal2
The problem here is all the OS features are discarded. Can't insert password from password manager because to do so the page would need to access to passwords. Can't use the user dictionary because to do so would be a privacy issue. Doesn't support CJK and other languages that require an input method editor. etc....
It also means a platform's features are not duplicated so your app's behavior sticks out as having a different experience from everything else the user does making it frustrating.
That said, if you want see an app in WebGL/WASM where the browser is rendering everything there's https://earth.google.com as a high end example. It has most of the issues just mentioned as well as the fact that nothing is selectable by default. Want to copy a name so you can paste it into your search engine of choice. NO! Want to right click on a foreign name to find out how to pronounce it? NO! etc....
- anilgulecha
This is a good experiment. What does it take to have a wasm powered corss platform architecture for apps. So far tauri had done something, but requires a humongous backend (system webview).
If we can reach this goal in under 1mb or 2, this is a massive improvement to the SoTA. Experiments such as these are what get is there. kudos.