same for us... again, specific industry, trading... but our whole row has 6 monitors for each person.... most of the main applications are native... plenty of web, but still most native

so for "cross platform app that can be deployed and new versions pushed easily, with offline support" jvm + javafx/swing + some surrounding infrastructure, might be quite nice

@mikehearn That’s “pro/internal” segment (people whos daily work is with the software). Desktop is still king there. But “semi-pro” space is slowly cannibalized by mobiles as vendor port more and more features of their “big” desktop apps on mobile and “prosumers” are discovering that they now have enough feature for their casual use, so they don’t need desktop

tablet/mobile sounds nice, but not for our industry... core apps are still desktop

yeah

that may well be true. but it's not inherent. it's more like - the desktop space has stopped trying to compete

Haha I'm still arguing with people in my workplace that web apps are not optimal for complex business apps.

I have to point out that mobile apps are not using web.

it's not that mobile operating systems are inherently better. it's more that the people there are genuinely trying. android + instant apps for a desktop/laptop form factor would be cool, but .... i don't see it on the horizon. google tried with ARC + Chrome but it seemed half hearted

@thomasnield let them use them all day them... most devs love web/mobile too... for the customer... while they use native apps all day long...

anyway, for my own projects and things, i'd quite like a java desktop app container

i'm comfortable with javafx and kotlin. i used to do android coding but it wasn't as comfortable for me

@jchildress I'm often in a position where I inherit a previously failed project built in HTML5. I get it done in a matter of weeks with TornadoFX, which turns a lot of heads. But there's always that one person in IT who says "why didn't you do it in HTML5?"

and i'm getting old. i like my desktop apps, i like laptops and even desktops. i like keyboards. if i could have an app browser for jvm apps and a nice pipe and a dog and a warm fireplace and a retirement i'd be happy 🙂

sadly i can't retire yet

so i'll have to settle for the app browser and a pipe

@mikehearn I've been waiting for mobile apps to die for 7 years and be replaced with "mobile web browser apps".

@mikehearn I hear you... I like lossless music too 🙂 Maybe just old....

So why not deploy to desktop natively just like mobile?

Anyways, yes this is a good initiative. How do we start?

with a slack channel and a beer. like how all good adventures start.

i'm actually in an all day client workshop today, fortunately via VC, hah 🙂 so my mental bandwidth is currently somewhat constrained.

but if we strike on a nice name then it's easy to create

PortalFX, ContainerFX....

I'll think about it.

no reason why it can't support swing apps too, or other toolkits

or indeed be used for games

the java gamedev community is surprisingly large

and they are natural allies for such a project

although it's a bit tougher because sandboxing OpenGL is a PITA.