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

MacGap vs wxWidgets

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

MacGap
MacGap
Stacks7
Followers44
Votes3
GitHub Stars3.5K
Forks208
wxWidgets
wxWidgets
Stacks21
Followers75
Votes19
GitHub Stars6.9K
Forks1.9K

MacGap vs wxWidgets: What are the differences?

MacGap: 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; wxWidgets: It is a cross platform GUI library. 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.

MacGap and wxWidgets can be primarily classified 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, wxWidgets provides the following key features:

  • Support for gesture events (GSoC 2017 project)
  • Getting JavaScript code return value from wxWebView (also GSoC 2017 project)
  • New wxSecretStore class for securely storing user passwords

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
wxWidgets
wxWidgets

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 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.

open-source;tiny compiled app sizes;Mac App Store compatible;access to many Mac OS X-specific features
Support for gesture events (GSoC 2017 project); Getting JavaScript code return value from wxWebView (also GSoC 2017 project); New wxSecretStore class for securely storing user passwords; New, available in parallel with the existing one, CMake build system; Support for context-sensitive translations.
Statistics
GitHub Stars
3.5K
GitHub Stars
6.9K
GitHub Forks
208
GitHub Forks
1.9K
Stacks
7
Stacks
21
Followers
44
Followers
75
Votes
3
Votes
19
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 3
    Remember that Mac app you always wanted to create... ?
Cons
  • 2
    Only for Mac
Pros
  • 5
    Native looking UI
  • 4
    Learning Curve
  • 3
    Cross platform
  • 2
    Permissive license. Commercial with static linkage.
  • 2
    Open source
Cons
  • 1
    Uses Qt for GUI (wxQt)
Integrations
No integrations available
Perl
Perl
C++
C++
Windows
Windows
Linux
Linux
Python
Python
macOS
macOS
Ruby
Ruby

What are some alternatives to MacGap, wxWidgets?

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.

Sciter

Sciter

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.

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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