Features · Installation · Usage · Documentation · WebUI
Use any web browser or WebView as GUI.
With Go in the backend and modern web technologies in the frontend.
- Parent library written in pure C
- Portable (Needs only a web browser or a WebView at runtime)
- Lightweight (Few Kb library) & Small memory footprint
- Fast binary communication protocol
- Multi-platform & Multi-Browser
- Using private profile for safety
- Cross-platform WebView
Note
Until the next stable release it is recommended to use go-webui's latest development version.
-
The easiest way to setup go-webui as a Go module is to use the
setup.shorsetup.batscript.It will run
go getto retrieve the go-webui module and bootstrap the version of the WebUI C library that it is using.- Windows
sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/webui-dev/go-webui/main/setup.bat)"- Linux / macOS
sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/webui-dev/go-webui/main/setup.sh)" -
The instructions below set up go-webui in a
modulessubdirectory of a go project.go-project ├── modules │ └── go-webui ├── ... └── go.modAdd and init the submodule
git submodule add https://github.com/webui-dev/go-webui.git modules/go-webui
git submodule update --init --filter=blob:none --recursive
replacethe path accordingly in theg.modfile.require github.com/webui-dev/go-webui/v2 v2.5.0 replace github.com/webui-dev/go-webui/v2 v2.5.0 => ./modules/go-webui -
The command below retrieves go-webui as a lightweight, filtered clone.
git clone --recursive --shallow-submodules --filter=blob:none --also-filter-submodules \ https://github.com/webui-dev/go-webui.git
<!-- index.html -->
<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
<script src="webui.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
<button onclick="test();">Test Go-WebUI</button>
<script>
async function test() {
// Call a Go function.
const result = await myGoFunction('Hello From JavaScript');
alert(result); // "Hello From Go"
}
</script>
</body>
</html>// main.go
package main
import (
"fmt"
ui "github.com/webui-dev/go-webui/v2"
)
func myGoFunction(e ui.Event) string {
// Get first argument
name, _ := ui.GetArg[string](e)
fmt.Printf("JavaScript sent: %s\n", name) // Hello From JavaScript
// Return a response to JavaScript
response := fmt.Sprintf("Hello From Go")
return response
}
func main() {
// Create a window.
w := ui.NewWindow()
// Bind a Go function.
ui.Bind(w, "myGoFunction", myGoFunction)
// Show frontend.
w.Show("index.html")
// Wait until all windows get closed.
ui.Wait()
}Find more examples in the examples/ directory.
Enable WebUI's security layer by adding the webui_tls build tag.
go run -tags webui_tls <path>To use WebUI's debug build, add the webui_log build tag. E.g.:
go run -tags webui_log minimal.go- Online Documentation (WIP)
Borislav Stanimirov discusses using HTML5 in the web browser as GUI at the C++ Conference 2019 (YouTube).
Web application UI design is not just about how a product looks but how it works. Using web technologies in your UI makes your product modern and professional, And a well-designed web application will help you make a solid first impression on potential customers. Great web application design also assists you in nurturing leads and increasing conversions. In addition, it makes navigating and using your web app easier for your users.
Today's web browsers have everything a modern UI needs. Web browsers are very sophisticated and optimized. Therefore, using it as a GUI will be an excellent choice. While old legacy GUI lib is complex and outdated, a WebView-based app is still an option. However, a WebView needs a huge SDK to build and many dependencies to run, and it can only provide some features like a real web browser. That is why WebUI uses real web browsers to give you full features of comprehensive web technologies while keeping your software lightweight and portable.
Think of WebUI like a WebView controller, but instead of embedding the WebView controller in your program, which makes the final program big in size, and non-portable as it needs the WebView runtimes. Instead, by using WebUI, you use a tiny static/dynamic library to run any installed web browser and use it as GUI, which makes your program small, fast, and portable. All it needs is a web browser.
| WebView | Qt | WebUI | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Runtime Dependencies on Windows | WebView2 | QtCore, QtGui, QtWidgets | A Web Browser |
| Runtime Dependencies on Linux | GTK3, WebKitGTK | QtCore, QtGui, QtWidgets | A Web Browser |
| Runtime Dependencies on macOS | Cocoa, WebKit | QtCore, QtGui, QtWidgets | A Web Browser |
| Language | v2.4.0 API | v2.5.0 API | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| Python | ✔️ | not complete | Python-WebUI |
| Go | ✔️ | not complete | Go-WebUI |
| Zig | ✔️ | not complete | Zig-WebUI |
| Nim | ✔️ | not complete | Nim-WebUI |
| V | ✔️ | not complete | V-WebUI |
| Rust | not complete | not complete | Rust-WebUI |
| TS / JS (Deno) | ✔️ | not complete | Deno-WebUI |
| TS / JS (Bun) | not complete | not complete | Bun-WebUI |
| Swift | not complete | not complete | Swift-WebUI |
| Odin | not complete | not complete | Odin-WebUI |
| Pascal | not complete | not complete | Pascal-WebUI |
| Purebasic | not complete | not complete | Purebasic-WebUI |
| - | |||
| Common Lisp | not complete | not complete | cl-webui |
| Delphi | not complete | not complete | WebUI4Delphi |
| C# | not complete | not complete | WebUI4CSharp |
| WebUI.NET | not complete | not complete | WebUI.NET |
| QuickJS | not complete | not complete | QuickUI |
| PHP | not complete | not complete | PHPWebUiComposer |
| Browser | Windows | macOS | Linux |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mozilla Firefox | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Google Chrome | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Microsoft Edge | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Chromium | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Yandex | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Brave | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Vivaldi | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Epic | ✔️ | ✔️ | not available |
| Apple Safari | not available | coming soon | not available |
| Opera | coming soon | coming soon | coming soon |
| WebView | Status |
|---|---|
| Windows WebView2 | ✔️ |
| Linux GTK WebView | ✔️ |
| macOS WKWebView | ✔️ |
Licensed under the MIT License.