Desktop application development with Javascript and HTML

Question

I am looking for Titanium Appcelerator alternatives for Desktop application development with HTML and JavaScript. I want to convert a web app to a desktop application. Hence, there will be a lot of server interaction. Appcelerator was a good choice, but it looks like the company is no longer interested in the Desktop SDK. Also, ajax request from Appcelerator does not retain cookies.

I read that Adobe Air can be used for desktop app development, but I don't want to use flash.

How good is XULRunner? Will it allow features like Growl notificaiton and creating tray icons?

Will I be able to develop applications using mostly Javascript and HTML in Qt?

Answer 1

I started looking into Titanium for desktop dev. I liked the concept but not the implementation. I then stumbled upon chromiumembedded and have been mostly very happy with it. It's basically a web browser control based on chromium. http://code.google.com/p/chromiumembedded/

It's written in C++ so you can do all the low level OS stuff you want(Growl, tray icons, local file access, com ports, etc) in your container app, and then all the application logic and gui in html/javascript. It allows you to intercept any http request to either serve local resources or perform some custom action. For example, a request to http://localapp.com/SetTrayIconState?state=active could be intercepted by the container and then call the C++ function to update the tray icon.

It also allows you to create functions that can be called directly from javascript.

My biggest challenge has been debuging. It's very difficult to debug javascript directly in CEF. There's no support for anything like Firebug that I am aware of.

Answer 2

Appjs (appjs.org) looks very promising.