Posts Tagged ‘DesktopDevelopment’
[DevoxxFR2025] Winamax’s Journey Towards Cross-Platform
In today’s multi-device world, providing a consistent and high-quality user experience across various platforms is a significant challenge for software companies. For online gaming and betting platforms like Winamax, reaching users on desktop, web, and mobile devices is paramount. Anthony Maffert and Florian Yger from Winamax shared their insightful experience report detailing the company’s ambitious journey to unify their frontend applications onto a single cross-platform engine. Their presentation explored the technical challenges, the architectural decisions, and the concrete lessons learned during this migration, showcasing how they leveraged modern web technologies like JavaScript, React, and WebGL to achieve a unified codebase for their desktop and mobile applications.
The Challenge of a Fragmented Frontend
Winamax initially faced a fragmented frontend landscape, with separate native applications for desktop (Windows, macOS) and mobile (iOS, Android), alongside their web platform. Maintaining and developing features across these disparate codebases was inefficient, leading to duplicated efforts, inconsistencies in user experience, and slower delivery of new features. The technical debt associated with supporting multiple platforms became a significant hurdle. Anthony and Florian highlighted the clear business and technical need to consolidate their frontend development onto a single platform that could target all the required devices while maintaining performance and a rich user experience, especially crucial for a real-time application like online poker.
Choosing a Cross-Platform Engine
After evaluating various options, Winamax made the strategic decision to adopt a cross-platform approach based on web technologies. They chose to leverage JavaScript, specifically within the React framework, for building their user interfaces. For rendering the complex and dynamic visuals required for a poker client, they opted for WebGL, a web standard for rendering 2D and 3D graphics within a browser, which can also be utilized in cross-platform frameworks. Their previous experience with JavaScript on their web platform played a role in this decision. The core idea was to build a single application logic and UI layer using these web technologies and then deploy it across desktop and mobile using wrapper technologies (like Electron for desktop and potentially variations for mobile, although the primary focus of this talk seemed to be the desktop migration).
The Migration Process and Lessons Learned
Anthony and Florian shared their experience with the migration process, which was a phased approach given the complexity of a live gaming platform. They discussed the technical challenges encountered, such as integrating native device functionalities (like file system access for desktop) within the web technology stack, optimizing WebGL rendering performance for different hardware, and ensuring a smooth transition for existing users. They touched upon the architectural changes required to support a unified codebase, potentially involving a clear separation between the cross-platform UI logic and any platform-specific native modules or integrations. Key lessons learned included the importance of careful planning, thorough testing on all target platforms, investing in performance optimization, and managing the technical debt during the transition. They also highlighted the benefits reaped from this migration, including faster feature development, reduced maintenance overhead, improved consistency across platforms, and the ability to leverage a larger pool of web developers. The presentation offered a valuable case study for other organizations considering a similar move towards cross-platform development using web technologies.
Links:
- Anthony Maffert: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonymaffert/
- Florian Yger: https://www.linkedin.com/in/florianyger/
- Winamax: https://www.winamax.fr/
- Devoxx France LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/devoxx-france/
- Devoxx France Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/devoxx.fr
- Devoxx France Website: https://www.devoxx.fr/
[KotlinConf2019] Desktop Development with TornadoFX: Kotlinizing JavaFX with Liz Keogh
JavaFX, the successor to Swing for creating rich client applications in Java, offers a modern approach to desktop UI development with a cleaner separation of function and style. However, working directly with JavaFX can sometimes involve verbosity and untyped stylesheets. Liz Keogh, a renowned Lean and Agile consultant and a core member of the BDD community, presented a compelling alternative at KotlinConf 2019: TornadoFX. Her talk explored how TornadoFX, a Kotlin wrapper around JavaFX, simplifies desktop development with type-safe builders, stylesheets, and the syntactic sugar Kotlin developers appreciate. Liz Keogh’s consultancy work can often be found via lunivore.com.
TornadoFX aims to make JavaFX development more idiomatic and enjoyable for Kotlin developers. It leverages Kotlin’s powerful features to reduce boilerplate and introduce modern development patterns like dependency-injected MVC/MVP. The official website for the framework is tornadofx.io.
Simplifying JavaFX with Kotlin’s Elegance
Liz Keogh’s session highlighted how TornadoFX enhances the JavaFX experience. Key advantages include:
* Type-Safe Builders: Instead of manually instantiating and configuring UI components in JavaFX, TornadoFX provides type-safe builders. This allows for a more declarative and concise way to define UI layouts, reducing the chance of runtime errors and improving code readability.
* Type-Safe Stylesheets: JavaFX typically uses CSS for styling, which is not type-safe and can be cumbersome. TornadoFX introduces type-safe CSS, allowing styles to be defined directly in Kotlin code with autocompletion and compile-time checking. This makes styling more robust and easier to manage.
* Dependency Injection and Architectural Patterns: TornadoFX incorporates support for architectural patterns like Model-View-Controller (MVC) and Model-View-Presenter (MVP) with built-in dependency injection. This helps in structuring desktop applications in a clean, maintainable, and testable way.
* Kotlin’s Syntactic Sugar: The framework makes full use of Kotlin’s features, such as extension functions, lambdas, and DSL capabilities, to create a fluent and expressive API for building UIs.
Liz demonstrated these features through practical examples, showing how quickly developers can create sophisticated desktop applications with significantly less code compared to plain JavaFX.
Practical Application: Building a Desktop Game
To illustrate the power and ease of use of TornadoFX, Liz Keogh built a desktop version of the game “Don’t Get Mad!” (a variant of Ludo/Pachisi) live during her presentation. This hands-on approach allowed attendees to see TornadoFX in action, from setting up the project to building the UI, implementing game logic, and handling user interactions.
She showcased how to:
* Define views and components using TornadoFX’s builders.
* Apply styles using type-safe CSS.
* Manage application state and events.
* Integrate game logic written in Kotlin.
While focusing on TornadoFX, Liz also touched upon broader software development principles, such as the importance of automated testing. She candidly mentioned her preference for unit tests and the need for more in her demo project due to deadline constraints, reminding attendees about the test pyramid. This practical demonstration of building a game provided a tangible example of what’s possible with TornadoFX and how it can accelerate desktop development.
TornadoFX and the Kotlin Ecosystem
Liz Keogh’s presentation positioned TornadoFX as a valuable addition to the Kotlin ecosystem, particularly for developers looking to build desktop applications. By providing a more Kotlin-idiomatic layer over JavaFX, TornadoFX lowers the barrier to entry for desktop development and makes it a more attractive option for the Kotlin community.
She also mentioned another personal project, “K Golf” (Kotlin Game of Life), a JavaFX application she uses for teaching Kotlin, hinting at her passion for both Kotlin and creating engaging learning experiences. Her talk inspired many Kotlin developers to explore TornadoFX for their desktop application needs, showcasing it as a productive and enjoyable way to leverage their Kotlin skills in a new domain. The session underscored the theme of Kotlin’s versatility, extending its reach effectively into desktop development.