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

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

#201

Post by chupasaurus »

toyg wrote: post #173
faitswulff wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not everyone on earth is a dev/gamer/video-editor. For regular people, electron is a cancer that needs to be nipped in the bud. That's not how I expected that sentence to end. I don't think regular people are nearly as concerned with performance as the groups you listed are. Regular people are probably using Electron via Slack for work and if it's slow and bloated it's ultimately not their problem. Even a few secon…

The irony of talking about "regular people" and then using Slack as somebody "regular people" actually use. "Regular people" are likely to encounter electron by using Telegram or Whatsapp on the desktop, or some recent MS product like Skype. Whether they care or not about bloat, I don't know. I know those chat programs used to have annoying problems with cut & paste and not supporting basic assistive technology (i.e.…

Telegram Desktop is a Qt-based app and it doesn't run everything on top of QtWebEngine.

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

#202

Post by vianneychevalie »

wolframhempel wrote: post #138

I'm glad to see how this debate has matured from focusing on the technical downsides to focusing on the business and end-user benefits. But at the same time, whenever I have Blender open, effortlessly displaying eight different 3D views and UV mappers and the Spotify app, almost crashing my system by playing music, I can't help but wish that more developers would walk the extra mile for the user experience.

Some of the apps like Spotify, or more recently Microsoft Teams are completely equivalent in their web version. The browser is better at preventing system crashes from a tab than a single encapsulated web app.

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

#203

Post by sorenjan »

toyg wrote: post #173
faitswulff wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not everyone on earth is a dev/gamer/video-editor. For regular people, electron is a cancer that needs to be nipped in the bud. That's not how I expected that sentence to end. I don't think regular people are nearly as concerned with performance as the groups you listed are. Regular people are probably using Electron via Slack for work and if it's slow and bloated it's ultimately not their problem. Even a few secon…

The irony of talking about "regular people" and then using Slack as somebody "regular people" actually use. "Regular people" are likely to encounter electron by using Telegram or Whatsapp on the desktop, or some recent MS product like Skype. Whether they care or not about bloat, I don't know. I know those chat programs used to have annoying problems with cut & paste and not supporting basic assistive technology (i.e.…

> "Regular people" are likely to encounter electron by using Telegram or Whatsapp on the desktop

Telegram is written in C++ and uses Qt. Maybe you're thinking of Discord?

https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop

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

#204

Post by Cthulhu_ »

tobyhinloopen wrote: post #144
disillusion wrote: post #122

I think it's interesting how debates about Electron inevitably end up with the arguments 'the developer wants X' vs 'the user wants Y'. However, there's one aspect a lot of people seem to overlook in their arguments: pragmatism. The ideal application: - uses almost no memory - uses almost no disk space - is extremely fast - costs (next to) nothing - and has all the features in the world - presented in a manner that a…

I feel like i've seen this argument before, for Java desktop applications

And in my experience those have never taken off - just like in-browser applets - because they were too slow. The only Java based desktop applications I can think of are IDEs to write Java with, and those are too slow.

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

#206

Post by jasode »

bitwize wrote: post #200
fxfan wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> snappy enough to run > Electron is a new brainer Not everyone on earth is a dev/gamer/video-editor. For regular people, electron is a cancer that needs to be nipped in the bud. Remember, 91% of the desktop on earth is Windows (meaning regular USD 300 machines). And of them I'd wager less than 10% fit have machines where electron is snappy (1.2K Thinkpads). What the earth needs is a better cross platform native GUI…

Qt isn't good enough for you? These days it's even scriptable with JavaScript.

To add some fyi... a lot of Qt experts recommend you restrict the usage of Javscript to the QML layout of GUI controls and data binding. For business logic (especially cpu-intensive tasks), use C++.

Example of that "avoid Javascript" advice:

deep link: https://youtu.be/vzs5VPTf4QQ?t=30m55s

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

#207

Post by w0utert »

GordonS wrote: post #180
w0utert wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> What the earth needs is a better cross platform native GUI framework. NOT electron. I always like to use VSCode as an example. It's a tool a use on a daily basis, and I like almost everything about it. It's also a poster-child for a good Electron application, maybe one of the best around. Add to that I completely understand why it was made using Electron, and why it might not have existed in this form (available,…

> I always like to use VSCode as an example... Agreed, it's a great example of why Electron exists, but also a great example of an Electron app done well - I've used other Electron apps that have far fewer features, yet feel sluggish and/or are incredible memory hogs. > But it's not.snappy.enough. I also use VSCode on a daily basis (on Windows), and TBH I don't find it any less snappy than native IDEs such as Visual…

One of the standard replies I get when I complain about VSCode being sluggish is that it's not worse or even better than Visual Studio on Windows. That might be true, I don't use Visual Studio so I wouldn't know, but it's an argument that's completely unrelated to Electron. For me that's just whataboutism.

I would rather compare VS code to a regular editor with syntax highlighting, autocomplete and a few bindings to quickly kick off tasks, because that's essentially what it is. Could be Emacs, Vim, Sublime, etc. That's how I use VS Code, so that's what I compare it to. That said, for example XCode or CLion also feel faster, and I consider those way more feature-heavy than VS code.

>> Do you use it on Windows, or another platform?

I'm using VSCode on Linux, on a moderately sized C++ code base with the Microsoft IntelliSense LSP extension. I realize that some of the annoyances I experience are because of the C++ LSP stuff, which is still in preview, but it definitely isn't contained to just that. I sometimes also use VS code on macOS for JavaScript and Python projects, and even though it's a little better there, it's still nowhere near a good native editor. The weird glitches I experience are present on both platforms, and I've had a fair share of them. Keyboard input freezing for some seconds, buffers not updating when files changes, shortcuts not firing, drawing/refresh errors, just to name a few.

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

#208

Post by ericol »

fxfan wrote: post #137
disillusion wrote: post #122

I think it's interesting how debates about Electron inevitably end up with the arguments 'the developer wants X' vs 'the user wants Y'. However, there's one aspect a lot of people seem to overlook in their arguments: pragmatism. The ideal application: - uses almost no memory - uses almost no disk space - is extremely fast - costs (next to) nothing - and has all the features in the world - presented in a manner that a…

> snappy enough to run > Electron is a new brainer Not everyone on earth is a dev/gamer/video-editor. For regular people, electron is a cancer that needs to be nipped in the bud. Remember, 91% of the desktop on earth is Windows (meaning regular USD 300 machines). And of them I'd wager less than 10% fit have machines where electron is snappy (1.2K Thinkpads). What the earth needs is a better cross platform native GUI…

Also, in the third world things are moving towards machines running celeron / atom CPUs, with 4GB of memory and 32 GB of hard drive space.

Out of experience can tell you 32 GB is a space that can be killed rather fast.

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

#209

Post by pault »

arghwhat wrote: post #196
markn951 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But it's not.snappy.enough. I was following you until this line... In general I agree about Electron though probably not to the same degree as you. But for me VSCode runs amazingly well; I think the only thing that tops it is Sublime (and I vastly prefer VSCode's interface and features). Not saying that what you said isn't your experience, but you should know it's not everyone's experience.

VSCode is worlds faster than Atom. However, relative to any native editor (Sublime Text, Gedit, GVim, Notepad++, Notepad itself, ...), VSCode ranges from anywhere between "sluggish" to "... is it frozen?". Now, I agree that how big the difference is, and how big a problem that becomes is subjective, but the presence of the difference itself is not. A good example being opening a new window. This is something I do sem…

I wish we could stop calling software we don't like "a cancer". It's hyperbole and detracts from the conversation, IMO. The phrase "x is a cancer" is a cancer. :)
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