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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Frameworks
  4. Cross Platform Desktop Development
  5. MacGap vs Sciter

MacGap vs Sciter

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

MacGap
MacGap
Stacks7
Followers44
Votes3
GitHub Stars3.5K
Forks208
Sciter
Sciter
Stacks6
Followers31
Votes20

MacGap vs Sciter: What are the differences?

Developers describe MacGap as "Desktop WebKit wrapper for HTML/CSS/JS applications". MacGap provides HTML/JS/CSS developers an Xcode project for developing native OS X App. These Apps run in OS X's WebView and take advantage of WebKit technologies. MacGap exposes a JavaScript API for OS X integration, such as displaying native notifications or writing data to a file. MacGap is extremely lightweight and nimble; a blank application weighs less than 1MB. On the other hand, Sciter is detailed as "An HTML/CSS/scripting engine designed to render modern desktop application UI". It brings a stack of web technologies to desktop UI development. Web designers, and developers, can reuse their experience and expertise in creating modern looking desktop applications.

MacGap and Sciter can be categorized as "Cross-Platform Desktop Development" tools.

Some of the features offered by MacGap are:

  • open-source
  • tiny compiled app sizes
  • Mac App Store compatible

On the other hand, Sciter provides the following key features:

  • Cross platform
  • Embeddable
  • Flexible

MacGap is an open source tool with 3.59K GitHub stars and 227 GitHub forks. Here's a link to MacGap's open source repository on GitHub.

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Detailed Comparison

MacGap
MacGap
Sciter
Sciter

MacGap provides HTML/JS/CSS developers an Xcode project for developing native OS X App. These Apps run in OS X's WebView and take advantage of WebKit technologies. MacGap exposes a JavaScript API for OS X integration, such as displaying native notifications or writing data to a file. MacGap is extremely lightweight and nimble; a blank application weighs less than 1MB.

It brings a stack of web technologies to desktop UI development. Web designers, and developers, can reuse their experience and expertise in creating modern looking desktop applications.

open-source;tiny compiled app sizes;Mac App Store compatible;access to many Mac OS X-specific features
Cross platform; Embeddable; Flexible; Small footprint
Statistics
GitHub Stars
3.5K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
208
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
7
Stacks
6
Followers
44
Followers
31
Votes
3
Votes
20
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 3
    Remember that Mac app you always wanted to create... ?
Cons
  • 2
    Only for Mac
Pros
  • 4
    Small bundle size
  • 4
    Faster than ElectronJS
  • 4
    Cross platform apps
  • 4
    Good for commercial projects
  • 4
    Use C++ API
Cons
  • 2
    Ultralight si lo es,aunque hay módulos comerciales
  • 1
    Doesn't support Javascript
  • 1
    No es open source
  • 1
    Close source project
  • 1
    Less/bad documentation
Integrations
No integrations available
Sentry
Sentry
Electron
Electron
Photon
Photon
Jolteon
Jolteon
DoneJS
DoneJS
Hazel
Hazel
Nightmare.js
Nightmare.js

What are some alternatives to MacGap, Sciter?

Electron

Electron

With Electron, creating a desktop application for your company or idea is easy. Initially developed for GitHub's Atom editor, Electron has since been used to create applications by companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Slack, and Docker. The Electron framework lets you write cross-platform desktop applications using JavaScript, HTML and CSS. It is based on io.js and Chromium and is used in the Atom editor.

wxWidgets

wxWidgets

It is a C++ library that lets developers create applications for Windows, macOS, Linux and other platforms with a single code base. It has popular language bindings for Python, Perl, Ruby and many other languages, and unlike other cross-platform toolkits, it gives applications a truly native look and feel because it uses the platform's native API rather than emulating the GUI. It's also extensive, free, open-source and mature.

Qt5

Qt5

It is a full development framework with tools designed to streamline the creation of applications and user interfaces for desktop, embedded, and mobile platforms.

JavaFX

JavaFX

It is a set of graphics and media packages that enables developers to design, create, test, debug, and deploy rich client applications that operate consistently across diverse platforms.

React Native Desktop

React Native Desktop

Build OS X desktop apps using React Native.

JUCE

JUCE

It is a C++ framework for low-latency applications, with cross-platform GUI libraries to get your apps running on Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android.

Proton Native

Proton Native

Create native desktop applications through a React syntax, on all platforms.

NodeGUI

NodeGUI

It is an open source library for building cross-platform native desktop applications with JavaScript and CSS like styling. It is based on Qt5 and NOT chromium, hence it is memory and cpu efficient.

pygame

pygame

It is a cross-platform set of Python modules designed for writing video games. It includes computer graphics and sound libraries designed to be used with the Python programming language.

SDL

SDL

It is a cross-platform development library designed to provide low level access to audio, keyboard, mouse, joystick, and graphics hardware via OpenGL and Direct3D.

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