quasar-proton [WIP]

A fresh take on creating cross-platform apps.

Proton brings a mode to build Quasar Apps that creates tiny, blazing fast binaries for all major desktop platforms. In Quasar's neverending quest for performance and security, the core team is proud to offer an alternative to Electron.

Whether you are just starting out making apps for your meetup or regularly crunch terabyte datasets, we are absolutely confident that you will love using Proton as much as we love making and maintaining it.

It leverages Cocoa/WebKit on macOS, gtk-webkit2 on Linux and MSHTML (IE10/11) or Webkit via Edge on Windows. Proton is based on the MIT licensed prior work known as webview. The default binding to the underlying webview library uses Rust, but other languages are possible (and only a PR away).

Current Status

We are in the process of vetting this new mode. It is not yet available to use without jumping through some development hurdles. If you don't care, please reach out to the team at https://chat.quasar.dev and we'll guide you through the process.

Comparison between Proton and Electron

	Proton	Electron
Binary Size MacOS	3.6 MB	148.7 MB
Memory Consumption MacOS	13 MB	34.1 MB
Benchmark FPS †	TODO	TODO
Interface Service Provider	Varies	Chromium
Quasar UI	VueJS	VueJS
Backend Binding	Rust	Node.js (ECMAScript)
Underlying Engine	C++	V8 (C/C++)
FLOSS	Yes	No
Multithreading	Yes	No
Bytecode Delivery	Yes	No
GPU Support	Yes	No
Geolocation	Yes	No
WebAPI	Yes	No
Multiple Windows	Yes	Yes
Can Render PDF	Yes	No
Updater	Yes	Yes
Inter Process Communication (IPC)	Yes	Yes
Cross Platform	Yes	Yes
Custom App Icon	Yes	Yes

Relation to Upstream Origins

We have made the decision to fork, enhance and maintain several upstream projects here in this repository, in order to guarantee the security of the code and our ability to enhance it with features that may not be needed for other consumers.

We hope that this code is useful, but make no claims to suitability or guarantees that it will work outside of the Quasar ecosystem.

This has been done with our best attempt at due diligence and in respect of the original authors. Thankyou - this project would never have been possible without your amazing contribution to open-source and we are honoured to carry the torch further. Of special note:

zserge for the original webview approach
Boscop for the Rust Bindings

Licenses

Logo: CC-BY-NC-ND Original Proton Logo Design by Daniel Thompson-Yvetot Based on the prior work by Emanuele Bertoldi

Note: This license notice will not be complete until we have performed an upstream audit. If you feel that your name should be listed here, please create a PR to this file and provide references so we can fact-check. Thanks!

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