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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

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Deskgap lightweighter than Electron if, at the end of the day, it's using the browser on my OS (which, let's assume, is Chrome)?

Because if it uses the same browser binary as your other web apps (tabs or other DeskGap apps), the OS can share memory between them. Not possible with electron since every app bundles its own Chromium binary.

That is incorrect. Programs can't share memory just because they've been launched from the same binary.

This is just reusing a DLL and saving disk space thanks to it.

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

#132

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…

This comment should be posted under each Electron vs The World discussion as a reminder by a bot.

Disclaimer: I hate Electron. (but really appreciate and admire its developers)

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

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if it uses the same browser binary as your other web apps (tabs or other DeskGap apps), the OS can share memory between them. Not possible with electron since every app bundles its own Chromium binary.

That is incorrect. Programs can't share memory just because they've been launched from the same binary. This is just reusing a DLL and saving disk space thanks to it.

Pretty sure they can on Linux at least.

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

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody wants to be testing against multiple browser/rendering engines in 2019 You mean like when building websites?

I build websites, and I don't want to be testing against multiple browser/rendering engines. I do it cos I have to, not for the hell of it.

I and most people work, because to not starve we have to, not for the hell of it. So the original statement is truism. Nobody wants to do the hard work in 2019.

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

#135

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…

Pretty perfect summary and the reason why I pick native for side projects and electron for paid work (unless explicitly requested).

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

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy. The text is marked up, mixed in with images, video and other miscellaneous rich content, and includes remote resources and third party embeds. There is no native UI toolkit that can do this properly, nor is there a cross platform way for 3rd parties to integrate even if there was. So web it is, with a runtime designed for being able to rapidly page in/out the entire UI from one screen to the next, even if…

macOS Messages (aka iMessage) has been rendering text chat using HTML views for years, and it doesn't use gobs of memory. The problem isn't that the text part is rendered using HTML. That actually makes sense - multiple desktop applications that compose/render user generated rich content rely on HTML (or something converted to HTML) and a web view of some description to render that content: mail, chat, etc. The probl…

> macOS Messages (aka iMessage) has been rendering text chat using HTML views for years, and it doesn't use gobs of memory.

Keep in mind that the OS and the hardware it runs on comes from the same company that does iMessages. You shouldn't discount the amount of control that brings.

Contrast that to people who have to work with different OS platforms and hardware specifications.

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

#137

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 framework. NOT electron.

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

#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.

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

#139
post #115
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…

As somebody who deals with HTML and CSS often I like the idea to be able to use these layout skills in a desktop GUI. But size and speed matter (you don’t see much elektron based games..). We as a humanity can’t just always build faster and more powerful computers and then let developers throw these gains away by building more elaborate Rube-Goldberg-machines, that take 100 times the space they need, running more thi…

> Many of same people who waste tremendous amounts of energy and collective human time writing ineffective applications might end up to be really pro-environmentalists outside their job, but when it comes to computers suddenly we don’t care. As long as it is acceptable on a new machine, who cares, right?

This is such a privileged thing to say. I would guess there are far more important environmental problems to worry about. There are also more things that can be done that have more impact.

> It would be entirely possible to write perfectly fast and efficient GUI applications using HTML and CSS as layout engines without dragging whole browsers into this. Using system webview might not be the solution. But maybe something that doesn’t feel like it has been taped together with duct tape would help. A fully fleged browser engine for a desktop app is overkill in most common usecases and while I understand why one decides for Elektron, I’d rather see a really thought out solution than one that has been duct taped together.

Convince platform owners to agree on a common spec for GUI that's implemented consistently. Otherwise, what you want will ever remain a pipe dream.

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

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but what users want is even more important Only developers and very tech-savvy people bitch about Slack. Your average person working in Sales, HR, or operations cares not for the memory footprint of Slack. It's also not nearly as bad as people make it out to be. Yeah, it's slower than mIRC, fair enough. But IRC is dead to almost everyone and Slack took over, so it is what it is.

They do, but they misdiagnose it as "my computer is slow" or normalize it because that's all they're used to.

Anecdata but I never heard of that complaint for people I know that use Slack.

Maybe the circle I am in simply has great computers. But who knows.

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