Background

ComposeUI is a .NET based, WebView2 using UI Container for hybrid web-desktop applications. Our goal is to fill the feature gaps with respect to UI components, layout management, and subpar native hosting in other industry container solutions by providing a standard container as an open desktop platform. It is a hybrid solution that meets the needs of a diverse application catalog as well as a compelling opensource alternative.

Use cases

• Supports desktop and web applications
• Unified UI and App Host
• Open source UI Container
• WebView2’s evergreen distribution model
• Cross-process messaging
• FDC3 Support

Alternatives

Progressive Web Apps

• Support for desktop is mostly non-existent beyond simple scenarios.
• There is no support or roadmap for hosting native content.

Electron

• Releases are pinned to Chromium and Node.js releases.
• History of security issues
• There is no integration with native window applications.

OpenFin

• Releases are pinned to Electron releases.
• Native integration, while existing, is more for interoperability at the messaging level only
• incur licensing cost

Finsemble

• Releases are pinned to Electron releases.
• The pluggable core services can only be written in JavaScript.

Glue42

• The core product is based on PWA
• Same-origin restrictions
• Limited window management

Getting Started

The javascript dependencies are managed by a lerna monorepo.

Run scripts

In the root folder

npm i

Build all modules

npx lerna run build --stream

Test all modules

npx lerna run test --stream

Building a sepecific module

npx lerna run build --stream --scope=@morgan-stanley/composeui-messaging-client

List all modules in the workspace

npx lerna list