There are ways to write apps for both the web and desktop using Javascript and supporting technologies (i.e. React Native, Electron, etc.). But these approaches can be tricky to get right, and they often require learning a wide range of tools and jumping between different languages (JavaScript, HTML, CSS). A major downside to this ecosystem is JavaScript itself. The language is very popular and well adopted, but its lack of a type system has seen the rise of TypeScript. While a very sound language, TypeScript is only utilized for client-side web development.

Doodle is a new framework that side steps all of these issues and makes it much easier to write applications for the web that also run on desktop. This works because Doodle is written entirely in Kotlin and so are its apps. Kotlin is a strongly typed language designed to work in a wide range of runtimes. It can target the JVM directly like Java, run natively alongside things like C++ and transpile to JavaScript so it can run in the browser. This means these targets are all areas Doodle can also address.

But Doodle does more than just present a single language to work with. It also has a powerful set of APIs for doing precise rendering with vector graphics and basic support for 3D. Moreover, user input with pointers and touch are supported out of the box. So is a simple, yet expressive animation toolkit.

Check out Doodle if you're planning on building a web app. There are also a set of tutorials showing more complex use cases.