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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

#141

Post by arvinsim »

dmitriid wrote: post #123
kijin wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Users don’t want a “lightweight app”. Users want an app with .

Exactly. If users are held at gunpoint and have to choose between a fast app and a feature rich app, I would bet they will choose the latter.

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

#142

Post by h1d »

ahartmetz wrote: post #128
stonogo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then again, the Slack app segfaulted on launch for months because of a node.js incompatibility with newer glibc. So I guess what you've traded for is - Nobody bothers to be testing against multiple operating systems in 2019. - Everybody gets to wait for Slack to get around to it while the system webview gets the compatibility update almost immediately. Great for the authors, shit for the users. On the bright side, it…

Nice. What did you switch to? I'm watching that space so i can recommend alternatives everywhere I work. Must be F/OSS. Top of the list currently are Rocket.chat and Matrix.

Try mattermost

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

#143

Post by lugg »

arvinsim wrote: post #70
lugg wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The parent comment was stipulating that CSS is mature. The reply was that it isn't because there are lots of features that are not available to all browsers. A mature platform would be one where the features are consistent in whatever environment it is in. So in that regard, CSS is not mature. "Just don't use new stuff" is not an excuse.

I never said it was an excuse. I said it was a valid approach, so are polyfills.

My issue isn't really with that my issue is that the issues with CSS and the valid workarounds are not painful enough to validate electron as a solution.

If electron did what it promised I wouldn't have a problem.

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

#144

Post by tobyhinloopen »

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

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

#145

Post by stephenr »

arvinsim wrote: post #136
stephenr wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Adium did exactly the same thing - rendering chat contents using HTML. It also didn’t use gobs of memory.

The hard work of optimisation has been done by apple, any app can embed a web view for content and take advantage of the optimisations in the system html renderer.

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

#146

Post by h1d »

microcolonel wrote: post #73
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.

And where does Firefox go?

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

#147

Post by MrStonedOne »

TomMarius wrote: post #131
accatyyc wrote: post #110

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.

You are confusing data memory and code memory.

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

#149

Post by Razengan »

As a user, I don't like Electron; "webapps" always feel clunky and alien compared to native apps and the rest of the OS.

As a developer, I can appreciate Electron's utility in targeting multiple platforms, but one has to wonder:

Why isn't there a good, open, cross-platform UI library already, that compiles to the native UI of each OS?

Has there even been an initiative to make one?

You'd think the global developer community would have come together to tackle this problem by now, consider how it's such a pain point for all of us and users as well.

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

#150

Post by sigi45 »

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…

Slack is Electron. Slack is installed on many laptops. Slack App just sucks and wastes real resources.
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