For over two decades, we've been building web applications on a foundation that dates back to an era of static documents. The Document Object Model (DOM) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), both born in the late '90s, were designed for a simpler web. Today, we’re asking them to style and manage complex, highly interactive applications. Is it any wonder they struggle to keep up?
"CSS wasn’t built for managing the intricate layouts of complex applications—it was built to make your hyperlinks blue and underline your headings."
A System Straining Under Modern Demands
When the DOM and CSS were introduced, web pages were static and lightweight. Today, applications often render tens of thousands of DOM elements simultaneously. This is where the cracks start to show:
Reflows and Repaints: Every change to the DOM can trigger a cascade of recalculations across tens of thousands of elements. This process is computationally expensive, especially in data-heavy applications like dashboards or real-time trading platforms.
CSS Selectors at Scale: The browser has to evaluate complex selectors across the entire DOM, leading to inefficiencies. A simple rule like .header > div must traverse and match elements against a tree containing thousands of nodes.
Limited GPU Utilization in the Browser: One of the biggest frustrations with traditional web-based applications is that the browser only offloads some CSS operations to the GPU. While certain CSS properties—such as transforms, animations, and opacity—can be GPU-accelerated, the majority of styles are still processed on the CPU. This creates a bottleneck, especially in complex, dynamic applications.
Nested Layers of Complexity
Modern frameworks like React or Angular mitigate some DOM inefficiencies but often exacerbate the problem by introducing their own layers of abstraction. Virtual DOMs, while helpful, still rely on underlying DOM updates to reflect changes on-screen.
The Result: A Bottleneck for Performance
Despite modern optimizations, rendering thousands of elements with dynamic layouts and animations remains a challenge for the browser. This is particularly evident when compared to native or GPU-driven applications, where every pixel can be directly controlled.
A Different Approach with XFrames
XFrames takes a different approach to building user interfaces by skipping the DOM and CSS entirely. Instead of relying on the traditional browser rendering pipeline, XFrames directly harnesses the power of the GPU to deliver high-performance, scalable user interfaces—without the bottlenecks. Also, unlike frameworks like Electron, which rely on two distinct layers — one for application logic and another for rendering via a browser process — XFrames integrates both logic and rendering into a single process (with the possibility to use Node workers for even higher performance and scalability). This eliminates the need for costly IPC communications between processes.
Direct GPU Rendering: One of the main advantages of XFrames is its ability to send rendering instructions directly to the GPU. Unlike the browser, which can only offload certain CSS properties to the GPU, XFrames maximizes GPU utilization for everything—from layout to animations—ensuring smooth, responsive interfaces that are native-like in performance.
Deterministic Layouts with Yoga: Rather than relying on complex CSS rules and reflows, XFrames uses Yoga, a layout engine designed for performance and flexibility. Yoga calculates layouts in a deterministic and efficient manner, which means it can handle even the most complex UIs without triggering unnecessary recalculations or reflows, resulting in a seamless experience.
Cross-Platform Performance: Whether you’re building a desktop application or a web app using WebAssembly, XFrames supports multiple platforms out of the box. This is achieved by bypassing the limitations of the browser and leveraging native rendering capabilities, making it possible to develop high-performance applications that work consistently across different environments.
Eliminating the DOM Overhead: By bypassing the DOM, XFrames eliminates the overhead of managing thousands of DOM elements. Instead of a slow, CPU-bound rendering cycle, XFrames sends precise instructions to the GPU for rendering, ensuring your application stays fast even as it scales.
Why Choose XFrames?
Simplicity: You no longer need to fight with CSS and the DOM to get the performance you need. With XFrames, you can focus on building your application’s functionality and user experience without worrying about performance degradation as your UI becomes more complex.
Scalability: XFrames was built with modern, data-intensive applications in mind. Whether you're developing a real-time trading platform or an interactive dashboard, XFrames can handle the rendering workload without breaking a sweat.
Performance: From the ground up, XFrames is designed to be lean and fast, leveraging the GPU for every aspect of the UI.
Ready to Unlock Next-Gen Performance?
With XFrames, you can break free from the traditional DOM and CSS bottlenecks while still leveraging WebAssembly for cross-platform compatibility. Whether you're building for the web or desktop, XFrames ensures that your application can take full advantage of GPU-driven rendering, delivering native-like performance without sacrificing flexibility.
XFrames is still under heavy development and, whilst it is not quite production-ready, getting involved now means that you would be helping shape its development and influence its roadmap.
So far, XFrames has been tested on WebGPU-enabled browsers (Chrome, Edge, Firefox Nightly) and Node.js (through OpenGL 3) on Windows 11 (x64), Ubuntu 22+ (x64), Fedora 41 (x64), Debian Trixie (x64), Raspberry OS (arm64 on a Raspberry Pi 5).
Give it a try and let us know your feedback!
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