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Electron 3.0.0

electronjs.org

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21–30 of 141 posts

Re: Electron 3.0.0

#21

Post by enraged_camel »

pvg wrote: post #18
Razengan wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is writing native apps honestly still so hard these days? I can appreciate the concerns about maintaining multiple codebases and dealing with different delivery mechanisms and their rules, but modern iOS/macOS and Windows APIs (at least; I cannot speak for Android and Linux) seem just as easy, let you work in arguably better languages, evolve at a faster rate, and provide a better experience for users and their machi…

It's still about twice the work. Or n-times, for n platforms.

Twice the work for front-end only, and even that is arguable. The overall logic of the client across different platforms will be very similar. The only thing that will change is language and implementation details.

Re: Electron 3.0.0

#22

Post by Rjevski »

Brakenshire wrote: post #20
Rjevski wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always recommend using the browser because you're likely to have one open anyway, so you might as well reuse that (and save resources) than run another one.

Are there any browsers which allow you to do your own electron-like wrapping of webapps? Would be nice to have your own native icon etc, but also be able to tune exactly what behaviour you want, for instance set per app caching levels, cookies, what happens when it goes to background, etc. A good example is on mobile, where playing media on the web is a hassle because you never know what the background behaviour will…

Firefox used to support this but they nixed it (but hey, they gave us Pocket instead, yay! /s)

Re: Electron 3.0.0

#23

Post by Razengan »

benbristow wrote: post #15
comboy wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you really though

If it makes for easier programming, yes. Writing Slack as a native app would be a massive pain. Especially due to all the web-like features it has, the fact that it's one codebase (mainly) for desktop and web. They also have to support Windows, Linux, Mac and mobile. Not an easy task

There are more complex apps with native versions for multiple platforms, by smaller companies.

Re: Electron 3.0.0

#24

Post by true_religion »

LeoNatan25 wrote: post #17
benbristow wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it makes for easier programming, yes. Writing Slack as a native app would be a massive pain. Especially due to all the web-like features it has, the fact that it's one codebase (mainly) for desktop and web. They also have to support Windows, Linux, Mac and mobile. Not an easy task

For a billion dollar company? Give me a break.

Slacks annual revenue was 200 million in 2017, when they were a 5 billion dollar valued company. 200 mil is just 1000 Bay Area salaries, and they do have other budget items.

Its entirely possible that they cannot fund 5 native development teams, while building their core features to justify their valuation, and paying their sales and marketting team to actually generate revenue.

Re: Electron 3.0.0

#25

Post by jsjohnst »

Brakenshire wrote: post #20
Rjevski wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always recommend using the browser because you're likely to have one open anyway, so you might as well reuse that (and save resources) than run another one.

Are there any browsers which allow you to do your own electron-like wrapping of webapps? Would be nice to have your own native icon etc, but also be able to tune exactly what behaviour you want, for instance set per app caching levels, cookies, what happens when it goes to background, etc. A good example is on mobile, where playing media on the web is a hassle because you never know what the background behaviour will…

> Are there any browsers which allow you to do your own electron-like wrapping of webapps?

FluidApp[0] should work great and I bet there’s even a userscript already to handle desktop notifications.

[0] https://www.fluidapp.com

Re: Electron 3.0.0

#26

Post by pvg »

enraged_camel wrote: post #21
pvg wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still about twice the work. Or n-times, for n platforms.

Twice the work for front-end only, and even that is arguable. The overall logic of the client across different platforms will be very similar. The only thing that will change is language and implementation details.

Different environment, different conventions, different bugs, different design, different support, different everything. Different teams that have to communicate. It is 'arguable' that it's twice the work, that is true. Twice is the lower bound.

Re: Electron 3.0.0

#27

Post by geodel »

Razengan wrote: post #12
seanalltogether wrote: post #4

I really hope whatever the NativeWindow changes are allow Slack to finally stop rendering when the app goes to the background. My battery has been killed a couple times by the Slack renderer using ~30% cpu playing gifs while the app isn't visible, and their support says its because they don't have a notification hook for minimizing

Is writing native apps honestly still so hard these days? I can appreciate the concerns about maintaining multiple codebases and dealing with different delivery mechanisms and their rules, but modern iOS/macOS and Windows APIs (at least; I cannot speak for Android and Linux) seem just as easy, let you work in arguably better languages, evolve at a faster rate, and provide a better experience for users and their machi…

It is. Especially for multi billion dollar companies with 100s of developers. Because you know careful evaluation, strategic direction, ROI etc has shown users prefer to update their own hardware instead of demanding companies to write efficient software.

Re: Electron 3.0.0

#28

Post by giancarlostoro »

Rjevski wrote: post #22
Brakenshire wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any browsers which allow you to do your own electron-like wrapping of webapps? Would be nice to have your own native icon etc, but also be able to tune exactly what behaviour you want, for instance set per app caching levels, cookies, what happens when it goes to background, etc. A good example is on mobile, where playing media on the web is a hassle because you never know what the background behaviour will…

Firefox used to support this but they nixed it (but hey, they gave us Pocket instead, yay! /s)

Seems to have a bugzilla ticket:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1407202

Re: Electron 3.0.0

#29

Post by jonny_eh »

Razengan wrote: post #23
benbristow wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it makes for easier programming, yes. Writing Slack as a native app would be a massive pain. Especially due to all the web-like features it has, the fact that it's one codebase (mainly) for desktop and web. They also have to support Windows, Linux, Mac and mobile. Not an easy task

There are more complex apps with native versions for multiple platforms, by smaller companies.

Such as?

Re: Electron 3.0.0

#30

Post by jonny_eh »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #3

It looks like a short list of new things, so maybe it makes sense to look at the first beta for v3: https://electronjs.org/releases#3.0.0-beta.1

Thanks, this is the "real" changelog. I wish projects didn't waste these great PR opportunities. There should be a blog post written by a human for human consumption that explains why we should be excited.
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