What about qt ? tcl/tk ? OpenGL ?

I'm not against electron app, in fact I think it's a really good idea. But saying it's the only good ui framework is disingenuous.

    [...] Electron is the only decent cross-platform UI framework

That's just not true.

What about Qt, wxWidgets, Tcl/Tk, or even Kivy?

In my opinion, Qt and wxWidgets apps look ugly. At least I never saw one that looks beautiful.

Telegram ? https://raw.githubusercontent.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop/d...

Battle.Net ? https://i.imgur.com/VCNEhgm.jpg

both are made with Qt

I didn't know Telegram uses Qt. No desktop messaging client has better UI/X.

Really? I joined a few groups but couldn't figure out how to post, and there was an emoji drawer eating up 1/3 of the screen, and was unable to be hidden. I consider myself a smart enough person to write an app that performs the role of Telegram, I shouldn't have trouble learning to use it.

See e.g. for a list of applications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_(software)#Qt_market

Of course it depends on where your interests lie but here's some examples: VLC, Spotify (Linux), old Opera, Krita, Google Earth, Tesla Model S in-car UI, webOS, SailfishOS, AMD's Radeon Software Crimson driver tool, and many others including what's already mentioned, Battle.net.

Any Qt app can be themed with CSS (Qt calls it QSS) as if it was an HTML page, just like Electron apps can be. You can completely change the design, if you wish to.

So, in terms of design, there’s basically no major difference there.

it's not like there are hundreds of cross-platform win/mac/linux software that have no problem being written in other frameworks than electron. See all the KDE apps, Krita, Inkscape, GIMP, Wireshark, Audacity, Unity3d, Maya, Houdini, Blender, LibreOffice etc etc which are all hundreds of time more featureful that your average Electron app.

Qt with QML and QtQuick? Also a nice cross-platform UI framework, supports JavaScript, and is highly performant.

JavaFX? Also a nice cross-platform UI framework, supports JavaScript, and is also better performant than Electron.

Also, both support HiDPI by default, and can be themed with CSS however you want them (in the exact same way that you could theme Electron apps)

Qt is leaps and bounds ahead.

Intellij products use java swing.