Live reload. GUI development in compiled languages is a pain compared to web development.
Try dioxus, it has live reload but it's a work in progress.
Dioxus seems to be 'just' another way to generate HTML on the desktop.
Electron but Rust?
Is there a legitimate upside there?
With Dioxus, program logic compiles to native code instead of running it through a JS engine, and it ships its own HTML renderer (Blitz) instead of bundling a whole browser. So it's a lot more lightweight and performant than Electron.
As a minor bonus, the live-reload is also faster than what frameworks like React do. It truly has subsecond latency, which isn't exactly a game changer but is nice when iterating on visual details of an app.
Re:Deno Desktop
by Abishek_Muthian on Monday June 22, 2026 @04:51AM
(#48627569)
Sounds similar to Wails. It does the same but with Go instead of Rust.
I don't think so, wails is more like tauri rather than diouxus
We now also have a custom GPU renderer (Blitz), which makes Dioxus more comparable to Flutter or the other Rust GUI toolkits (GPUI, Iced, etc).
For me it's not stable. After they change their renderer from one to another it freezes for me from time to time. But on the other hand I'm running Nvidia on Wayland so I feel no hate towards Zed owners - and restart is super quick ;)
Re:Deno Desktop
by Abishek_Muthian on Monday June 22, 2026 @05:17AM
(#48627761)
Interesting, I'm on Nvidia in Wayland most of the time too and haven't had single freeze or crash in a very long time. Even the Windows is running inside the Qemu.
What DE? I'm on KDE.
> basic features like accessibility is missing but I'm sure it will be implemented soon.
Accessibility implementations frequently are more complex than the entire UI drawing bits. Most custom UI toolkits never implement accessibility, even decades after creation.
That hope is misplaced.
Re:Deno Desktop
by Abishek_Muthian on Monday June 22, 2026 @05:24AM
(#48627827)
I agree about the complexity, but the core developers understand that the accessibility support is crucial and that's where my hope comes from.
As a developer, I'm not sure what's the barrier for entry is apart from Rust then again it's the USP as well.