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

Photon vs wxWidgets

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Photon
Photon
Stacks32
Followers89
Votes0
GitHub Stars10.1K
Forks573
wxWidgets
wxWidgets
Stacks21
Followers75
Votes19
GitHub Stars6.9K
Forks1.9K

Photon vs wxWidgets: What are the differences?

What is Photon? Framework for Electron apps. The fastest way to build beautiful Electron apps using simple HTML and CSS. Underneath it all is Electron. Originally built for GitHub's Atom text editor, Electron is the easiest way to build cross-platform desktop applications.

What is 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.

Photon and wxWidgets belong to "Cross-Platform Desktop Development" category of the tech stack.

Photon is an open source tool with 9.1K GitHub stars and 527 GitHub forks. Here's a link to Photon's open source repository on GitHub.

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Detailed Comparison

Photon
Photon
wxWidgets
wxWidgets

The fastest way to build beautiful Electron apps using simple HTML and CSS. Underneath it all is Electron. Originally built for GitHub's Atom text editor, Electron is the easiest way to build cross-platform desktop applications.

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.

-
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
10.1K
GitHub Stars
6.9K
GitHub Forks
573
GitHub Forks
1.9K
Stacks
32
Stacks
21
Followers
89
Followers
75
Votes
0
Votes
19
Pros & Cons
No community feedback yet
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
Electron
Electron
Perl
Perl
C++
C++
Windows
Windows
Linux
Linux
Python
Python
macOS
macOS
Ruby
Ruby

What are some alternatives to Photon, 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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