Yesterday in #LibrePlanet chat I named the #Makepad project, a real adorable 😍 effort that's still lacking on the #a11y side, i.e. could do with some #AccessKit on board.
Today I found out that Makepad is apparently part of a #Rust appdev effort, called #Robius. Another project here is #Dioxus.. also in for @accesskit#accessiblity support.. maybe. 🤔
Robius looks like a very loose conglomeration of independent projects. Maybe AccessKit is even a fit to it?
At this point in time if you are making a UI framework you need to explain to me how i can make a Figma clone in it.
I do not care about your todo list, your form builder, your list-detail navigation or your page transition strategy. Those are not even table stakes, they're bus fare before you even get to the casino. I don't even care that you can do a block editor. Good for you.
If you have a serious UI framework and not a toy, show how you make a Figma - realtime, 2D freeform but with typographical, constraint based and explicit positioning, with fixed and floating guides and connections. Show me how easy it is and how performant it is. Show me how to structure my code to make it easy to build and collaborate.
Hard, expensive, premium UI has been about direct manipulation now for more than a decade and we're still pretending that the thing to demonstrate a library is ‘lol here's a wacky CRUD form app’
@leon I don't know where this sits in the spectrum you describe, certainly not yet in the production-readiness phase, but #Makepad by @rikarends might blow your mind in what it could become. A figma-compatible DSL embedded in the application (which is compiled to #WebAssembly) that can be modified at runtime. Works offline and on the web.
It's an ambitious undertaking this project. The Youtube video linked from the README shows stuff in live action.
Only feedback after watching the vid: Please, don't let AI handle #a11y .. maybe take inspiration from Ian 'Hixie' Hickson (Google Doc 😬 link at the bottom): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34612696
I should also mention that the objective of #Makepad is to bring #Coding and #Design closer together. The DSL they built allows a #Figma-like design experience.
In that regard @penpot might take note of this wholly different approach than the SVG path they're on.
Makepad itself is a startup, and I don't know if they're VC-funded and what their plans are.
But the paradigm would entail #LocalFirst apps and hybrid decentralization (federated, #p2p), together with these new #UI approaches that can run anywhere and implemented from any programming language.