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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

#221

Post by flintchip »

wolframhempel wrote: post #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.

random and probably irrelevant spotify tip:

I absolutely hated how slow and buggy the app was, until I realised it was down to it attempting to index music locally all the time

my app speed increased massively by going to settings > local files, and turning off all of the options of where to show songs from

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

#222

Post by styfle »

patr0nus wrote: post #2

Hi HN, DeskGap is another try to build an lightweight alternative to Electron. Compared to the existing attempts [0, 1], I choose not to go that far and bundle a real Node.js with it[2]. And to battle test the framework, I wrapped squoosh[3] into a desktop app[4] with DeskGap, and successfully submitted it to the app stores. [0] https://github.com/pojala/electrino [1] https://github.com/jscherer92/Quark [2] https://d…

Thanks for making DeskGap!

I have been watching these types of tools (desktop js frameworks) and I'm glad the DeskGap docs[0] explain the difference between existing tools like Electrino and Quark although the most notable difference is that those two projects are no longer maintained.

I just added DeskGap to my list of Awesome Desktop JS frameworks[1].

[0]: https://deskgap.com/#there-are-already-similar-attempts-elec...

[1]: https://github.com/styfle/awesome-desktop-js

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

#223

Post by fauigerzigerk »

wolframhempel wrote: post #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.

>Spotify app, almost crashing my system by playing music

Apparently the debate has matured from focusing on technical downsides to making unfalsifiable claims about technical downsides.

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

#224

Post by GordonS »

w0utert wrote: post #207
GordonS wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

One of the standard replies I get when I complain about VSCode being sluggish is that it's not worse or even better than Visual Studio on Windows. That might be true, I don't use Visual Studio so I wouldn't know, but it's an argument that's completely unrelated to Electron. For me that's just whataboutism. I would rather compare VS code to a regular editor with syntax highlighting, autocomplete and a few bindings to…

> I would rather compare VS code to a regular editor with syntax highlighting...

So, Visual Studio is somewhat sluggish, but Rider is not. I also mentioned Notepad2, which is a native text editor - I find VSCode just as snappy as that.

> I'm using VSCode on Linux, on a moderately sized C++ code base with the Microsoft IntelliSense LSP extension

I haven't used it on Linux, or at all with C++. I've used it on Windows and MacOS, for Typescript, JavaScript and Cordova projects, as well as for note taking (because I find it as fast as a text editor, yet much more fully featured).

Honestly, I've been using VSCode for a long time now, and I've never encountered any of the glitches you mentioned. Just did a totally scientific straw poll of co-workers, who say the same. You sound unsure, but I wonder if it is due to an extension you have installed?

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

#225

Post by cpburns2009 »

Razengan wrote: post #149

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 com…

There's actually plenty of them. Off the top of my head: (C) libui; (C++) wxWidgets; (Java) SWT; (JavaScript) ReactNative; (Pascal) Lazarus. Then there's the non-native toolkits that either emulate the OS: (C) GTK; (C++) Qt; (Java) Swing. There's also Tk (Tcl) but I'm not sure where that falls.

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

#226

Post by Fnoord »

accatyyc wrote: post #166
TomMarius wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Of course they can. This is what OS engineers have spent decades thinking about and optimizing. And then stuff like Electron appears and circumvents all those optimizations. Which is the main reason I dislike it.

Sure, but with sandboxing and technologies such as Firefox Containers, containers in general (such as Docker), and VMs (together with a secure enclave such as utilized in Qubes) it can all be thrown in the trash bin. Its just a matter of time until that's the norm. iOS is already on top of doing sandboxing well.

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

#227

Post by ronsor »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #217
fedesilva wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Same for me. I'm so surprised that browser makers still haven't solved this particular problem in spite of all browsers now being multi process.

use `chrome --app`

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

#228

Post by Fnoord »

jgillich wrote: post #162
patr0nus wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I shared your concern before I started the project, and talked about this in the readme's FAQ[0]. [0] https://deskgap.com/#faq

The majority of Linux users use a GTK desktop, IMO WebkitGTK would be preferable.

I use a GTK desktop on my Linux desktop computers (Ubuntu/Debian and Kali). However, I prefer Qt applications. They look very well on my GTK desktop.

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

#229

Post by jw14 »

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…

Over the years we've had many cross platform GUI frameworks. Both native (wxWindows, SWT) and non-native (Swing, Qt). Everyone was trying for "better".

There have always been questions of adoption, stability, fidelity of the user experience and others.

Meanwhile web apps have kept chugging along and browsers have gotten better and better.

> What the earth needs is a better cross platform native GUI framework.

I contend that "native" is irrelevant. People are "native" web users. They use web based interfaces daily. A browser based UI is the "cross platform native" (whatever that means) GUI.

It can be fast (if you do the work, which may involve firing up external processes) it can be beautiful it can look native and it can deliver great user experiences.

It's not the GUI framework we wanted, but it's the one we deserve :)

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

#230

Post by Fnoord »

fermienrico wrote: post #63
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…

No need to go too far to find an example: Sublime Text and Sublime Merge. While this route is probably not for quick app deployment, but boy can it kick ass when properly done in C++ with custom GUI framework. I love Sublime Text and Sublime Merge. I love their philosophy towards software design. I love how they value user experience above everything else. There are very few pieces of software that give you so much p…

fman (fman.io) for a dual pane file manager. Utilizing Qt, proprietary, cross platform, and follows the design philosophy of Sublime Text.
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