Choosing a cross-platform GUI technology

manpreet Best Answer 2 years ago

We are currently exploring technologies for our new cross-platform GUI;

So far, the strong options on the table are QT and Java, and lately, HTML-5 was put on the table as well.

Our application description (in short):

It's a client-server; it's internal (only employees use it), we have a vpn, so no wqorries regarding security in terms of web-app

The server side is written in C++, and runs on variable possible platforms (Windows, Linux, Unix)

The (GUI) client side should also run on all the above platforms, it's a different process and it communicates with the server via tcp-ip

GUI requirements (in high level):

The GUI client should support drop down menus, buttons, data grids;

The GUI should be dynamic: Widgets' data should be able to change, or be affected by the choosing of options in other widgets; Also, we will need an auto-complete for search boxes, in which the data should be retrieved from the server side or other data source in our control.

So far, we are thinking of writing the new GUI in QT, but we'd like to know if we should seriously consider HTML-5 instead, and make the GUI a web app;

In light of the GUI requirement presented above:

What's the Pros? Cons? Risks?

Thanks, Gal

manpreet 2 years ago

Qt comes with QWebView which provides support for HTML5, you can create the basics(login/help etc) in Qt and create the rest of the code in HTML5 displayed via webview avoiding using a browser to do so.

You can even try and explore about JavaFX, its relatively new but has great GUI effects and controls. The dynamic data features will be easy to implement in Java based APIs.