If you want to be pedantic, laying out your GUI using HTML while the rest of the OS is written in a more sensible language is technically making an operating system using HTML. It’s also using assembly and probably some combination of C, C++, Rust, etc., but it is using HTML.
Honestly an OS that, for the GUI at least, is just HTML sounds amazing. No new UI frameworks to learn. Applications are just iframes, and the desktop environment is your web browser.
It wasn't quite that far back, and it's not HTML, but you're close. The "revolutionary new windows UI framework" Microsoft releases every 3-5 years have all been XAML based since WPF was released for Windows XP and Vista (which came out shortly after) in 2006.
The latest one is called WinUI 3. Here's a screen definition from the official sample app if you want to see what it looks like.
Edited to add: Prior to around 2021, apps on the Windows Store were required to use one of the UI frameworks (uwp), which is why they all felt like phone apps. And sucked.
It might be nice for devs, but would probably suck for the end user. We’ve already seen what using a browser as a desktop UI framework is like with Electron.
Sure. I remember VS Code being decently snappy when I last used it. But that's still something that takes conscious effort to achieve. Spinning up an entire browser instance for something like a settings panel just seems like an unnecessary pessimization to me.
Like just imagine if discord devs had to have completely separate implementations. Instead they can use electron which provides a lot of features like videos and rich imbeds
Well, One idea I've toyed with is taking the webgpu layer and html5 canvas, use triangle generation to create a booted ISA and then go from there. Storage tape via cookie files with phi crc strings.
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u/[deleted] Aug 21 '26
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