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Show HN: Vuido builds desktop apps using Vue.js without Electron

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Re: Show HN: Vuido builds desktop apps using Vue.js without Electron

#101

Post by roryisok »

Can_Not wrote: post #97
roryisok wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Slack is essentially a fancy IRC The keyword here is fancy. Hexchat is an IRC client, sure, but it is minimalist. That would be like comparing a text file to a PDF and asking why the PDF needs so much more RAM when they're basically the same. I feel like you're mutating the argument from "electron uses 10x RAM compared to native apps" into "an IRC client doesn't need to use so much RAM" The proper comparison would…

I get what you're saying, but we already know that electron (specifically embedding a whole browser with DOM) is the culprit. There are some native UI toolkits with bindings available for NodeJS, if slack was refactored to replace electron with one, it would probably peak at 2x as much RAM than HexChat rather than averaging 10x to 100x.

100x now? You're saying there are electron apps in the wild using 10GB of memory? I was trying to argue that the 10x claim was an exaggeration but you've just leapfrogged that.

Re: Show HN: Vuido builds desktop apps using Vue.js without Electron

#102

Post by roryisok »

z3t4 wrote: post #68

I'm currently developing a web app and while my nw.js/electron version is around 50 MB and uses 200+ MB of memory, loading it in Firefox it's a 600kB bundle, fully renders in less then half a second, and uses a whopping 8 MB of memory in Firefox. Actually less the HN! So while I think this project is cool, if you consider using it, also consider making a in browser web app. Also remember that the browser is more then…

I think you're failing to include the firefox memory usage in that second example. the 200+MB memory of electron is because it includes the browser. Your 8MB file also needs firefox to run, so in a naked desktop environment the user first has to spin up 170MB+ of firefox before they can run your 8MB app.

Re: Show HN: Vuido builds desktop apps using Vue.js without Electron

#103

Post by roryisok »

madeofpalk wrote: post #64
jasonkester wrote: post #44

I feel like there's room for an Electron variant that's just "less electron". As in, I don't need all of Chrome to do my thing; just the HTML rendering engine and JavaScript interpreter. The thing that makes it 50gb is all the web sockets and ie4-comparable-iframe-shims that nobody ever uses on the desktop. Lop all that stuff and see how big the install is and how much memory it uses. My guess is it would be a lot le…

I know one of the whole appeals of Electron is the single target, plus being able to take advantage of Node, but I feel like some OS-intergration would be nice. Basically, PWAs for desktop. On Mac you could have a PWA-like target that is backed by the built in Safari, so all you need to distribute is your app (HTML + JS + CSS) itself and it just uses the OS-provided browser runtime.

That would be cool. It's sort of like the idea behind Firefox OS

Re: Show HN: Vuido builds desktop apps using Vue.js without Electron

#104

Post by z3t4 »

roryisok wrote: post #102
z3t4 wrote: post #68

I'm currently developing a web app and while my nw.js/electron version is around 50 MB and uses 200+ MB of memory, loading it in Firefox it's a 600kB bundle, fully renders in less then half a second, and uses a whopping 8 MB of memory in Firefox. Actually less the HN! So while I think this project is cool, if you consider using it, also consider making a in browser web app. Also remember that the browser is more then…

I think you're failing to include the firefox memory usage in that second example. the 200+MB memory of electron is because it includes the browser. Your 8MB file also needs firefox to run, so in a naked desktop environment the user first has to spin up 170MB+ of firefox before they can run your 8MB app.

But you do not need to have five full Firefox's running for using five web-app's.

Another benefit of web apps, is that with some effort it can run everywhere, where as an app container like electron needs to have separate builds for each platform.

Re: Show HN: Vuido builds desktop apps using Vue.js without Electron

#106

Post by pjmlp »

Can_Not wrote: post #96
pjmlp wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.NET has been doing it since 2008.

Is this something that's had good crossplatform support since 2008 or more recently?

No, it is something that has been doing "automatic data binding via property get/set interception, for example" since 2008, so it is easy to see it in an language that isn't JavaScript.

Additionally, Xamarin is older than VueJS.

Re: Show HN: Vuido builds desktop apps using Vue.js without Electron

#107

Post by Can_Not »

pjmlp wrote: post #106
Can_Not wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this something that's had good crossplatform support since 2008 or more recently?

No, it is something that has been doing "automatic data binding via property get/set interception, for example" since 2008, so it is easy to see it in an language that isn't JavaScript. Additionally, Xamarin is older than VueJS.

It would be a bigger deal if it was not windows only.

Re: Show HN: Vuido builds desktop apps using Vue.js without Electron

#108

Post by Rjevski »

roryisok wrote: post #93
Rjevski wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack is essentially fancy IRC, so we can take any IRC client as a baseline for how much RAM it should really use. Let’s take HexChat ( https://hexchat.github.io/ ) for example - it does most of what Slack does, plus has advanced features not available on Slack like a Lua, Python & Perl plug-in API. It used less than 100MB or RAM after running for days on a Linux machine. Slack is usually well into the GB of RAM afte…

> Slack is essentially a fancy IRC The keyword here is fancy. Hexchat is an IRC client, sure, but it is minimalist. That would be like comparing a text file to a PDF and asking why the PDF needs so much more RAM when they're basically the same. I feel like you're mutating the argument from "electron uses 10x RAM compared to native apps" into "an IRC client doesn't need to use so much RAM" The proper comparison would…

Well, I would understand a chat client taking more RAM should I ask it to pare & display some HTML, or videos, or PDFs. I'm not. I'm using Slack just like IRC - 3 users and a single channel even. No images, no videos, no HTML, no link previews, etc. That thing still absolutely melts down my CPU and RAM.

Re: Show HN: Vuido builds desktop apps using Vue.js without Electron

#109

Post by WhitneyLand »

jitl wrote: post #89
WhitneyLand wrote: post #85

What would be the disadvantages of just using a custom build of firefox for apps that bundles non-sandboxed libraries as needed? So for example, firefox.exe could actually be built to be my app.exe, with the generic browser UI replaced with specific app menus. The build could have options for bundling any library, or provide a simple OS essentials abstraction library with a web sockets or local web server http interf…

This is exactly what Electron / CEF is, except the tooling already exists for CEF, and there’s already a large ecosystem of libraries.

There is theory and practice. similar concepts, but for so long we’ve heard big hassles with electron solution real life deployment solutions (some companies only don’t even deploy electron multi platform, if it were that simple more would).

Also with memory usuage which was mentioned elsewhere in this discusssion.

The idea is maybe it could be done better. On the other hand maybe Electron has made great strides over last year or so, it would depend on how much progress has been made.

Cross platform code is great but in the end doing that while getting something out the door end to end multiplatform as fast as possible is key, while at the same time not having performance significantly worse than it would normally be for the same code in an off the shelf browser.

Re: Show HN: Vuido builds desktop apps using Vue.js without Electron

#110

Post by jclos »

jasonkester wrote: post #44

I feel like there's room for an Electron variant that's just "less electron". As in, I don't need all of Chrome to do my thing; just the HTML rendering engine and JavaScript interpreter. The thing that makes it 50gb is all the web sockets and ie4-comparable-iframe-shims that nobody ever uses on the desktop. Lop all that stuff and see how big the install is and how much memory it uses. My guess is it would be a lot le…

My question to those who are more informed than me is the following: why isn't the runtime distributed separately, like the JRE? It would essentially allow for smaller apps while keeping the advantages of Electron. It's an obvious thing so I'm sure there are reasons I'm not considering.
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