Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

When a rewrite isn’t: rebuilding Slack on the desktop

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 408 posts

Re: When a rewrite isn’t: rebuilding Slack on the desktop

#31

Post by bdcravens »

theredbox wrote: post #27
nottorp wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you don't see the browser it doesn't mean it's not still there. No, js/html "applications" are not desktop apps, they're web pages. Doesn't matter how you hide it.

Is Sublime Text a native app or a web page?

Native. VS Code is a web page by this definition however.

Re: When a rewrite isn’t: rebuilding Slack on the desktop

#32

Post by Klonoar »

I will consider this benchmark vindication both for myself and the times I've had to argue as to why Electron isn't the issue, as well as the commentator from many moons ago who worked at Slack, dropped in here and explained why Electron wasn't the problem (rather, poor engineering on Slack's part was), and then was ripped to shreds over it.

In fact I'm sure this comment will bring out native fanatics in force.

At any rate, good for them. Seems like they reengineered themselves to a happy medium. I can definitely see myself installing it again at some point.

Re: When a rewrite isn’t: rebuilding Slack on the desktop

#34

Post by _bxg1 »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #28
_bxg1 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No matter the available resources, maintaining three separate desktop apps as well as a web app would mean fewer features and more bugs across the board. And Linux would probably be left on Electron (with less support attention), if not abandoned altogether.

What about React Native on the desktop?

React Native isn't a zero-effort way to port a web app to a native app. It lets you share code where it makes sense, but you're still maintaining separate applications targeting different platforms that each have their own quirks and needs. It's similar to how you can't just port a regular native desktop app by using a different compiler; your business logic may be compatible, but you'll still have to do legwork on top of it.

Re: When a rewrite isn’t: rebuilding Slack on the desktop

#35

Post by guessmyname »

theredbox wrote: post #27
nottorp wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you don't see the browser it doesn't mean it's not still there. No, js/html "applications" are not desktop apps, they're web pages. Doesn't matter how you hide it.

Is Sublime Text a native app or a web page?

Sublime Text is 100% a native desktop application written in C++ with the Skia graphics library [1][2].

However, only a tiny fraction of Skia’s functionality is actually used, just for rasterizing lines and blitting images. Font rendering is done by using the underlying platform APIs to do the glyph rasterisation. The editor also exposes an ABI/API that plugins can use via Python scripts. C++ provides the cross-platform functionality, Skia provides the cross-platform UI, custom code was written to target specific parts of the UI in macOS (using Cocoa) and Linux (using GTK). A tiny web driver is used to render a super-minimal set of HTML tags for tooltips.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11689481

[1] https://skia.org/

Re: When a rewrite isn’t: rebuilding Slack on the desktop

#36

Post by _bxg1 »

ausjke wrote: post #33

so this new Desktop app will run inside a browser? or it still uses Electron underneath? It's unclear to me after reading the post. It's certainly not a native app though.

You're correct about what "native" means; the article never uses the word "native", though. This is still an Electron app, just a vastly improved one.

Re: When a rewrite isn’t: rebuilding Slack on the desktop

#39

Post by ausjke »

_bxg1 wrote: post #36
ausjke wrote: post #33

so this new Desktop app will run inside a browser? or it still uses Electron underneath? It's unclear to me after reading the post. It's certainly not a native app though.

You're correct about what "native" means; the article never uses the word "native", though. This is still an Electron app, just a vastly improved one.

thanks. realized the native is from a comment and just updated, so this is an improved electron slack desktop app then.
Post reply on HN