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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

#71

Post by MrEricSir »

airstrike wrote: post #19
tbodt wrote: post #13

Requiring your Windows users to have the October 2018 update makes no sense.

Read the entire article till you get to this part: https://deskgap.com/#why-is-the-supported-version-of-windows...

Wish they had more technical details here. IE 9 was an update just like the Windows 10 October 2018 update, but applies as far back as Vista. IE 9 is much more compliant with modern ECMAScript standards than IE 8 ever was.

IE has been available as a COM component in Windows applications for ages -- at least as far back as XP -- so it could be done.

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

#72

Post by maaaats »

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…

> Blows my mind we're still debating this.

Maybe you should consider that a sign that it's not as black&white as you tout it to be? I mean, what a way to just dismiss everything..

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

#73

Post by microcolonel »

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.

Soon they'll all be WebKit or Chromium.

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

#74

Post by arcturus17 »

toper-centage wrote: post #60
aylmao wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody This is like claiming nobody wants to write C because no one wants to manage their own memory in 2019, or miss out on all the cool new packages in the JS ecosystem. Evidently _some people_ do. I can assure you there's at least number _n > 1_ of people who care more about app size than either of your points. I personally wrote a side project in system web-view, because I don't want my macOS-only system-tray a…

I mean, fuck the users. Will nobody think of the poor poor developers?

Never heard a non-programmer user complain about the Spotify or Slack desktop apps, but that’s just me.

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

#75

Post by svrtknst »

I feel like there should be an option that lies between either "Install a new webview with every app" and "completely trust a previously installed webview".

I guess the downside is that that would be just a new .Net Framework, where an app requires you to install the Whatever Webview 2.5 in order to run, but it'd be neat to dodge Safari, while still having leaner Electron apps.

It could possibly be solved by specifying supported webviews in the application.

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

#76

Post by aaronbrethorst »

EGreg wrote: post #58
mch82 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody wants to be testing against multiple browser/rendering engines in 2019 Yes, lots of projects want multiple, competitive rendering engines. It used to be that Windows was the only viable target OS for commercial software. Firefox and Safari gave IE competition and gave developers who wanted to target Mac and Linux a way to get a foot in the door. That kicked off the whole generation of web apps we’ve just liv…

I’m going to disagree. Over the two decades I have been programming I have come to appreciate the benefit of Open Source Collaboration vs competition. Competition between platforms is good, but it’s not the best. Because those who produce content waste millions of hours collectively trying to address every little quirky difference between the platforms. And the standards only help so much, whether it’s POSIX or WHATW…

“M$”? Really? This isn’t slashdot.

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

#77

Post by kkarakk »

gpvos wrote: post #69
arvinsim wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's good that you are advocating for render engine competition. But I think you think you are getting off tangent. It has nothing to do with the point that trying to make your code work in multiple browsers/rendering engines is painful. Wanting a project to work with multiple rendering engines just because is an idealogical decision.

All software is political, so ideology is relevant.

The political ideology in play for the majority of software development is capitalism so we loop back to "if i can't get it done asap using this tool, i'm not going to use this tool"

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

#79

Post by kkarakk »

lugg wrote: post #53
onion2k wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That just isn't true. You only need to browse caniuse.com for 5 minutes to see there are significant differences between browsers even for mature CSS features. If you want to use anything new it's a minefield.

Not sure why your ADHD fuelled shiny seeking is an excuse for the shitshow that is electron. Just don't use new stuff? I'm also unsure how it is even supposed to solve that specific issue considering my laptop is currently running at least two versions of electron for different apps, both of which render text as their primary directive.

just don't differentiate from your competition using new features, instead focus on features users don't value at all - like memory consumption and being browser agnostic

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

#80

Post by kijin »

vedantroy wrote: post #61
mch82 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody wants to be testing against multiple browser/rendering engines in 2019 Yes, lots of projects want multiple, competitive rendering engines. It used to be that Windows was the only viable target OS for commercial software. Firefox and Safari gave IE competition and gave developers who wanted to target Mac and Linux a way to get a foot in the door. That kicked off the whole generation of web apps we’ve just liv…

The point is that developers don't want to be testing against multiple browser/rendering engines--hence why Electron was built. Maybe having multiple engines is good (although maybe the benefits are overstated since nowadays most engines align with the spec instead of implementing non-standard extensions like ActiveX), but it's not good for people for who want to quickly, and with low effort, develop desktop applicat…

What developers want is important, but what users want is even more important. If a lightweight app is what users want, that's a good enough reason for at least some companies to consider DeskGap over Electron.

I'm sick of sluggish "native" apps on my i7 PC with fast SSDs and 32GB of RAM. I don't even want to imagine how those apps perform on low-end devices.

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