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Asked: 2026-05-21T04:01:21+00:00

All, I’ve had an idea kicking around for a while now: Is there a

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All,

I’ve had an idea kicking around for a while now: Is there a standard graphics library/protocol like X Windows for HTML+JS? I’m primarily a desktop developer with experience in technologies like C#/WPF, but I’d like my piece of the web revolution. 🙂

To me most web technologies for displaying interactive apps seem to be too proprietary, slow, or graphically poor compared to what I expect from a desktop app on even a slow computer. It seems like if there were a way to use an abstracted graphical and user input layer and solid quasi-two-way communication, it wouldn’t be terribly difficult to make true desktop apps displayed in nearly all browsers.

Now what I’m saying isn’t just idle chat: I’ve gotten a little something cooked up with WPF to start extracting graphics primitives at the milcore layer and am pushing those out across the web using simulated sockets via orbited and Raphael for front-side rendering primarily as a fun hack. So far it wasn’t that hard, so I figure somebody else must have done it. WPF isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, but on the flip side many folks would probably love to have a solid OOP language to code most of the backend stuff with a standardized graphics protocol to the front end that’s not just HTML/CSS.

Now to me this seems like a very basic thing – a truly graphical client in the browser, on almost all browsers, sans plugins. We have browsers that can do all these high-level things and play audio and videos. I just want to draw triangles that can change. I assume I’ve just missed the boat and am reinventing the wheel. Can somebody please point me to a project that does this already so I can make some awesome web apps?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The fact that you’re interested in low level control from the backend at run time is probably a show-stopper, unless you can accept lots of lag.

    It takes a lot longer to communicate between the server and client in the web world. In a desktop, the lags are not worthy of measurement, but on the web, with HTTP requests, the delays are real, highly variable and potentially UX-destroying.

    1. Client notices a user click and calls out to let the server know (+50-500ms to transfer)
    2. Server finds out, issues an instruction to animate a triangle (+100ms to process)
      (+50ms-500ms to transfer)
    3. Client gets instruction, animates triangle (user perceived lag: 200ms to 1100ms)

    So… I’m not sure the exact architecture you’re thinking of is feasible on the web.

    If you revisit your assumptions a little, your options grow quite a bit. Removing the requirement to make roundtrips all the way to the backend for the application logic, for instance, would be very liberating. Try this interpretation of the desktop paradigm on for size:

    • X-Windows → The browser rendering engine (lowest level API, equivalent to hardware)
    • WPF → SVG, Raphael, jQueryUI etc. (higher level drawing APIs)
    • C# application logic → Client-side JS logic (OOP style)
    • File system → Web Server with DB

    Interesting question!

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