Posts Tagged ‘Winamax’
[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/