Are there HTML5 desktop app frameworks (like Titanium or Adobe AIR) that run on V8 or Rhino instead of JavaScriptCore?

Question

Our product, a desktop app, is composed of a ton of HTML5 and JavaScript together with a thin platform-specific layer that is basically a WebKit shell. Since this is much the same strategy as a framework like Appcelerator Titanium, and we waste way too much effort on this custom WebKit shell code, we were hoping to switch to Titanium or a similar framework to handle that for us.

However, such a switch would be much more compelling if we could pick up a nice modern JavaScript engine in the process. Like Titanium, we're currently on JavaScriptCore, which sucks (they still don't have Function.prototype.bind!). We'd take either V8, for speed and modernity, or Rhino, for yummy JavaScript 1.7/ECMAScript Harmony features.

Does anyone know of a framework for building desktop apps with HTML5 that uses either of these engines? Or some way of making either work with Titanium that will be very little effort? I saw the v8_titanium and rhino_titanium projects on GitHub, but see no mention of them anywhere else, or any documentation on how to use them. And the Adobe AIR WebKit page has nothing encouraging either.

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 23 '12 at 05:35

3

Node-webkit is just about done being ported to use cef3. https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit/tree/cef

answered Apr 23 '12 at 05:35

+1, I've been looking forward to this. Hope it works out well. – Domenic Apr 23 '12 at 05:44
1

After using appjs, I ended up switching to Node WebKit as it seemed better supported (it's an Intel project). Also, the packaging options are great with the ability to create a one file executable. – Joe Wood May 23 '13 at 20:08
AppJs actually has a poor canvas performance. Node-webkit is fast and is quite suitable for packaging HTML5/CSS/JS games. – Cliffmeister Oct 23 '13 at 07:01

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 30 '12 at 10:05

2

To follow up on this, we've just published binaries for all 3 platforms at https://github.com/milani/appjs | http://appjs.org. That's Chromium and Node, provided as a package that works out of the box with no configuration cross platform.

answered Jun 30 '12 at 10:05

This is really exciting. Looking forward to watching it evolve. – Domenic Jun 30 '12 at 22:51
How is appjs distinct from node-webkit? http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8794140/is-it-possible-to-create-desktop-applications-with-node-js – Anderson Green Nov 15 '12 at 06:55
one difference is that appjs is a module for node whereas node-webkit compiles node into webkit – Nov 15 '12 at 06:57
Is it possible to develop Google Chrome extensions using node-webkit, by any chance? It looks like it would be a great tool for developing browser extensions (if it were possible). – Anderson Green Nov 15 '12 at 16:11
Looks like a dead project now. – Michael J. Calkins Dec 14 '13 at 05:30

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 06 '12 at 16:01

1

We ended up on Chromium Embedded, which is a bit rough around the edges but definitely gets the job done.

answered Apr 06 '12 at 16:01

Domenic

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score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 20 '15 at 20:09

You can use Adobe AIR to build HTML5 desktop apps.

AIR uses the webkit engine: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/AIR/1.5/devappsflex/WS5b3ccc516d4fbf351e63e3d118666ade46-7ec1.html

Are there HTML5 desktop app frameworks (like Titanium or Adobe AIR) that run on V8 or Rhino instead of JavaScriptCore?

5 Answers5