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Show HN: DeskGap – Like Electron, but uses the system webview

deskgap.com

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Re: Show HN: DeskGap – Like Electron, but uses the system webview

#11

Post by Wehrdo »

patr0nus wrote: post #2

Hi HN, DeskGap is another try to build an lightweight alternative to Electron. Compared to the existing attempts [0, 1], I choose not to go that far and bundle a real Node.js with it[2]. And to battle test the framework, I wrapped squoosh[3] into a desktop app[4] with DeskGap, and successfully submitted it to the app stores. [0] https://github.com/pojala/electrino [1] https://github.com/jscherer92/Quark [2] https://d…

Looks like a great project!

The webpage mentions the app size, but no mention of RAM usage, which is a bigger concern with Electron apps to me. Can you comment on how it compares?

Re: Show HN: DeskGap – Like Electron, but uses the system webview

#12

Post by solarkraft »

Klonoar wrote: post #7
Octoth0rpe wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody wants to be testing against multiple browser/rendering engines in 2019. That's certainly _one_ reason why. I would posit that the main reason is that web developers would like to reuse their webapp skillset for building desktop apps. This seems like it accomplishes the goal. Re: testing against multiple browsers, frankly this is _mostly_ a solved problem. The big gaps between rendering engines is on the real…

It is not a mostly solved problem. The people behind Slack, Spotify, and so on have actually commented on these threads explaining the exact line of reasoning. This stuff isn't limited to just CSS, and it makes total business sense to avoid it.

The apps you mention are available on the web, so they have to do these exact things anyway.

What they really want to do is make that web app installable in the OS, no? I use WebPin to "install" websites (until this works natively in Firefox with PWAs) a lot of the time, even when they offer electron bundles (with the browser I already have, nodejs I already have ...).

Re: Show HN: DeskGap – Like Electron, but uses the system webview

#14

Post by patr0nus »

kodablah wrote: post #3
patr0nus wrote: post #2

Hi HN, DeskGap is another try to build an lightweight alternative to Electron. Compared to the existing attempts [0, 1], I choose not to go that far and bundle a real Node.js with it[2]. And to battle test the framework, I wrapped squoosh[3] into a desktop app[4] with DeskGap, and successfully submitted it to the app stores. [0] https://github.com/pojala/electrino [1] https://github.com/jscherer92/Quark [2] https://d…

Howdy, can you compare the system-side webview with https://github.com/zserge/webview ? Specifically, what control do you use on windows, MSHTML or have you incorporated the recently-freed-from-UWP (I think) Edge API? EDIT: Appears the latter [0]. Great work. I wonder how this affects bundling...does this make it a UWP app? 0 - https://github.com/patr0nus/DeskGap/blob/master/core/src/win...

No it's still a Win32 app. As you supposed, It's freed from UWP[0] ;).

[0]https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/communitytoolkit/co...

Re: Show HN: DeskGap – Like Electron, but uses the system webview

#15

Post by Klonoar »

Octoth0rpe wrote: post #8
Klonoar wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not a mostly solved problem. The people behind Slack, Spotify, and so on have actually commented on these threads explaining the exact line of reasoning. This stuff isn't limited to just CSS, and it makes total business sense to avoid it.

Maybe I'm just spoiled having doing web dev back in the netscape 4 era when things were _really_ bad. These days it seems like a reset stylesheet and a couple polyfills and you're good to go. I don't doubt that certain problem spaces still run into major cross browser issues, but I guess I've been lucky enough to avoid those problems for the last couple of years.

I'm just gonna link the actual Slack author who's already commented on this before and exit the thread.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18763449

Re: Show HN: DeskGap – Like Electron, but uses the system webview

#16

Post by petecox »

Klonoar wrote: post #5

These projects completely overlook _why_ people choose Electron over the system view. - Nobody wants to be testing against multiple browser/rendering engines in 2019. - Nobody wants to wait for a vendor to update their implementation when Chrome has the feature available almost immediately. Edit: Since I can already see the litany of armchair-quarterback-desktop-app-authors, I'm just going to link to the comment from…

That would be an argument for Microsoft switching to Chromium, albeit 'Edgium' might not entail the bleeding edge 6 week Chrome release cycle.

Re: Show HN: DeskGap – Like Electron, but uses the system webview

#17

Post by Klonoar »

patr0nus wrote: post #10
Klonoar wrote: post #5

These projects completely overlook _why_ people choose Electron over the system view. - Nobody wants to be testing against multiple browser/rendering engines in 2019. - Nobody wants to wait for a vendor to update their implementation when Chrome has the feature available almost immediately. Edit: Since I can already see the litany of armchair-quarterback-desktop-app-authors, I'm just going to link to the comment from…

> Nobody wants to be testing against multiple browser/rendering engines in 2019. That's why DeskGap uses EdgeHTML on Windows. With toolchains such as webpack and babel, building an app that runs on WebKit and EdgeHTML (which is going to be replaced by Chromium[0]) can't be that hard. > Nobody wants to wait for a vendor to update their implementation when Chrome has the feature available almost immediately. DeskGap do…

Mmmhmm. That's cool, although not original.

As I noted in an above comment...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18763449

Projects like DeskGap make this out to be a simpler problem than it actually is. ;P

Re: Show HN: DeskGap – Like Electron, but uses the system webview

#18

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

kodablah wrote: post #3
patr0nus wrote: post #2

Hi HN, DeskGap is another try to build an lightweight alternative to Electron. Compared to the existing attempts [0, 1], I choose not to go that far and bundle a real Node.js with it[2]. And to battle test the framework, I wrapped squoosh[3] into a desktop app[4] with DeskGap, and successfully submitted it to the app stores. [0] https://github.com/pojala/electrino [1] https://github.com/jscherer92/Quark [2] https://d…

Howdy, can you compare the system-side webview with https://github.com/zserge/webview ? Specifically, what control do you use on windows, MSHTML or have you incorporated the recently-freed-from-UWP (I think) Edge API? EDIT: Appears the latter [0]. Great work. I wonder how this affects bundling...does this make it a UWP app? 0 - https://github.com/patr0nus/DeskGap/blob/master/core/src/win...

What happens if you run an EdgeHTML-using application on Windows 7 or 8? I noticed that the EdgeHTML control in WinForms and WPF is not a drop-in replacement for the old WebBrowser control (i.e. it isn’t a subclass, so you must use one or the other, but Microsoft didn’t document the best way to switch between controls based on feature-detection).

Re: Show HN: DeskGap – Like Electron, but uses the system webview

#20

Post by kodablah »

Klonoar wrote: post #7
Octoth0rpe wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody wants to be testing against multiple browser/rendering engines in 2019. That's certainly _one_ reason why. I would posit that the main reason is that web developers would like to reuse their webapp skillset for building desktop apps. This seems like it accomplishes the goal. Re: testing against multiple browsers, frankly this is _mostly_ a solved problem. The big gaps between rendering engines is on the real…

It is not a mostly solved problem. The people behind Slack, Spotify, and so on have actually commented on these threads explaining the exact line of reasoning. This stuff isn't limited to just CSS, and it makes total business sense to avoid it.

I'd consider slack/spotify to be the outliers and I don't think this is targeting them. For the rest of the webdevs that just want to make a web app, Electron is appealing to them too and we shouldn't pretend the only reason they pick it up is browser compat issues.
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