A cross-platform Pornspective? Let me know!

Hi guys, as you know Pornspective is a Microsoft Windows based desktop application. It will only run on Microsoft Windows. However I've been asked on a couple of occasions about the possibility of running it on non-Microsoft platforms or through a standard cross-platform web browser.

This was something I thought long and hard about when starting Pornspective. In fact I have previously written a web based application I called HubDrive which worked very similar to Pornspective but was not aimed at Adult content. This was web based, worked well on Firefox and Chrome and could be hosted on a Linux, Mac or Windows platform. I used it for my Adult collection and it looked great however I found myself always going back to the Windows Explorer file system. Why? Because of two things mainly, the web app wasn't as slick to navigate as a purpose made desktop application i.e. shortcut keys, rapid etc and secondly the video player integration was very had work and clumsy. It became frustrating to use, especially when Firefox and VLC plugins stopped working due to a security update.

With Pornspective I went back to basics, made sure the engine was solid and ran well and also decided that it was going to be targeted purely at Adult content. I'd spent a year on a web version of HubDrive (a bit of a waste) so I wanted Pornspective to be available quickly and hence why I chose the windows desktop way. Actually the reason I've managed to get quick functionality to Pornspective is because some of it came from HubDrive. This method has worked well, I've a very rich application in less than six months. I do acknowledge though the Windows route has left it with certain limits.

Will there ever be a cross platform version. The answer I believe is YES, I'm just not sure what approach to take yet. All of the core code is written in .NET and that can easily be moved to .NET Standard and multi platform functioning. It's the front end that causes the headache, currently .NET Standard does not have a slick way of doing the front end so it forces you to a web route way of thinking. I'm watching the .NET Standard closely though for how this is moving. Another option is to package with something like Wine, this allows .NET apps to be packaged for MacOS and Linux. This might be the quickest option, but I'm not sure how well it will work as I use some complex libraries in Pornspective, however I think this route would be the first route I try before going down a web route.

Obviously at the moment I'm working on AI Tagging, I'm opening up this for comments though. What would people rather see first, the AI stuff or maybe Linux/MacOS availability. Please comment below your thoughts on this.

Finally, and ironically I'm a MacBook user myself. All of Pornspective is written on a MacBook using VMFusion to host a Windows development environment. I'd quite like to see my Pornspective running bareback on my Mac too ;)

Guys, let me know!