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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

#171

Post by wilsonnb3 »

Kovah wrote: post #127
jayflux wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet so many still migrate to VSCode which is electron based. So maybe the difference you value isn’t valued enough to be worth it for most authors. I get the point you’re making, but you might be in the minority here.

You are comparing apples with pears. Sublime can't be compared to VS Code because the former is basically an advanced editor while the latter is an IDE (like PhpStorm or Atom). And I highly doubt that many users switching from Sublime to VS Code. They use one or the other for a specific reason, like a blazing fast and distraction free editing experience in Sublime - something you do not have in VS Code or any other I…

The line between advanced text editor and lightweight IDE is basically non existent.

Plenty of former sublime users are on VS code now.

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

#172

Post by fedesilva »

rkangel wrote: post #154
sigi45 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Genuine question - why do people install the Slack App? I haven't in ages, I just use the web-app and am very happy.

At least for me, webapps are just 1 in a thousand tabs open in 500 browser windows (ok, I exaggerate a bit). For an app with it's own window I can just hit a shortcut and said app gets focus. Disclaimer, not an Elektron fan.

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

#173

Post by toyg »

faitswulff wrote: post #152
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…

> 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. the "emoji keyboard"), but I have to admit they got better with time; if those fixes have made it upstream to Electron, then things are improving. They are still horribly opaque to native OS services like sharing facilities and whatnot, but it looks like OS developers themselves are throwing all that away these days, so...

I expect the real issue Electron might never solve is real support for more advanced assistive tech for the visually-impaired and other disabled people. That stuff barely works with traditional desktop tech as it is. Obviously that has never been an obstacle in the market at large, it mostly plays a part in public-procurement processes.

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

#174

Post by fb03 »

sh4rk wrote: post #164
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 disagree. The ideal application: - uses no memory - uses no disk space - is instant - costs nothing - and has all the features in the world - presented in a manner that automatically shows the user only the exact features (s)he cares about The real-world application, when the developers work for the customer and not for themselves: - uses almost no memory - uses almost no disk space - is extremely fast - costs next…

I disagree.

Sadly, we need to balance features, performance and expectations with our own expectations about what kind of software we want to deliver.

I sincerely hate Electron and the whole ecosystem of bloated apps it enables BUT having matured a bit i can understand why it exists. People that hold the money want software out and want it fast and they don't care if the customer now needs almost 4 gigs of ram in their phone just to play music or browse the odd website.

A depressing state of affairs imho, specially for us "old folks" which enjoyed our software native and optimized as much as we could.

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

#175

Post by w0utert »

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…

>> 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, up-to-date, and feature-complete on all platforms, regularly improved, etc) at all if it wasn't because of Electron.

But it's not.snappy.enough.

Even though large performance-sensitive parts of it like the editor buffer data structures etc are (AFAIK) implemented natively, the whole user experience is actually quite bad. It's sluggish, inconsistent, it's full of random glitches, and everything feels like an insane amount of effort went into putting more and more lipstick on various parts of a pig to hide that the whole thing is like a house of cards and sluggishness and instability hides around every corner.

I feel a little sad that so many developers defend Electron so vehemently, pretending that it's 'ok', 'fine' or even 'very good' for end users, because it's not. I fully agree it's great for the people (and mostly the companies making money off the people) who develop commercial stuff with it, because it obviously saves a shit-ton of money if you want to deploy something across the 3 major platforms.

All of this is completely unrelated to the end-user experience though, who typically uses just one platform at a time and couldn't care less if the application they are using is also on some other platform. Or if they use it across multiple platforms, how many extra UI devs where needed to make native UI's for each of them.

Any developer who knows how freaking fast modern computers are and why should, when completely honest, should feel ashamed that something like Slack or VSCode is made in a way that makes it so sluggish and memory-hungry, and that we now all accept this because it's cheaper to develop that way, and the applications are (supposedly) 'snappy enough to run'

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

#176

Post by lojack »

rkangel wrote: post #154
sigi45 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Genuine question - why do people install the Slack App? I haven't in ages, I just use the web-app and am very happy.

Different screen share features only work in the app. I'd use the web app if all I needed was chat, but I'm on video calls and using screen share constantly.

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

#178

Post by baldfat »

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…

> 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.

My 10 year old netbook runs RStudio? Discord works great on my 10 year old Dell 2nd screen computer. What doesn't run VSCode?

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

#179

Post by userbinator »

arvinsim wrote: post #141
dmitriid wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Given what counts as "feature rich" these days (and it seems some developers are constantly removing things that users used to use), I doubt that.

Software used to be both fast and "feature rich" (relatively speaking), designed so users could "grow" and learn increasingly more of it. Now almost everything seems to have idiotically dumbed-down "flat" UIs that look simpler yet still manage to consume more resources than before.

The new Skype is a great example. Compare to something like this: https://www.microsip.org/ Yes, I know they're different protocols, but the point is that IM and audio/video call functionality doesn't need to take as much resources as Skype does.

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

#180

Post by GordonS »

w0utert wrote: post #175
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…

>> 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 Studio or Rider, or indeed native text editors such as Notepad2.

> the whole user experience is actually quite bad. It's sluggish, inconsistent, it's full of random glitches

Similarly, I just don't have this experience - I find it both consistent and performant.

Do you use it on Windows, or another platform?

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