PHP For Desktop Apps

Hi @shammadahmed ,

PHP is a web server programming language, so not 'quite'. The question has been answered on stack overflow before: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176978/is-there-a-way-to-develop-desktop-software-using-php

They outline how to do it and the recommendation to not do it there :)

Bad idea :)

Definitely yes. Recommended? Hell no!

If you want something really simple to develop apps on Windows, I'd go with AutoIt. Though, it won't work for OS X.

@shammadahmed Don’t do that. You’ll need to use a C-based language to develop cross-platform desktop apps.

Desktop apps are dying. Why are you going that way?

I wouldn't use php. Python or Ruby possibly but since C variants are more than likely a better choice why even Python, Ruby or Java?

lol, Java ... we are doing our best to get rid of Java on the desktop.

@martinbean What's the best language to develop cross platform apps?

Yes, what do you suppose you have in a development enviroment, a desktop application. But if you need to have multiple computers have access to the programs, you need to configure a client server. If that's the case where you are not using it on the web, why would anybody want to do such a thing, when there are much more efficient databases for client server.
I used to use visual foxpro, and later microsoft access.
The first step for you is to figure out exactly what it is you're trying to do.

@shammadahmed you might want to look into C++ and QT. Or I think the Python bindings for QT are still ok too. There's also Mono but I'm not sure of it's status these days - thankfully it's some time since I've had to write a desktop GUI :-)

@shammadahmed Did you even read my post? I told you:

You’ll need to use a C-based language to develop cross-platform desktop apps.

lol, Java ... we are doing our best to get rid of Java on the desktop.

Is there a reason why? I'm not as experienced in Desktop applications.

If you're experienced with JavaScript, Github's Atom editor has an open source project called Electron that people to build cross-platform Desktop apps in JavaScript using Node. It embeds an instance of Chromium (the open source browser/project Google Chrome is built from) which is used to display your views. Since you're embedding Chromium, you get the power and development tools you have in Chrome such as the Console, Network tab, and other useful features like that.

It's gaining a lot of traction and some well known apps are already using Electron such as: Visual Studio Code (code editor), Slack (real-time collaboration), and Ionic (cross-platform framework for building mobile apps using AngularJS).

@martinbean I meant that what's your preference?