Electron 7.0

#1

Post by ausjke » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 5:02 PM UTC

Electron 7.0
electronjs.org

Re: Electron 7.0

#2

Post by headcanon » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 5:29 PM UTC

Every time Electron is mentioned I bust out the popcorn for the inevitable hate spewed towards it:

"Javascript is a terrible language and no one should use it"

"Separate instances of chrome for every app is dumb and consumes too much memory"

"Qt is amazing and elegant and desktop-native. Why isn't everyone just using Qt?"

Re: Electron 7.0

#3

Post by Razengan » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 5:32 PM UTC

Since this is inevitably going to generate some discussion over native apps vs. Electron (ah there's already a fellow comment about it), I'd like to point out an example that is important to me of why Electron is an inferior experience for users:

In the GitHub Desktop client, which is an Electron app, I can't spell check my commit messages, something that every text field in every native macOS app gets for free.

Re: Electron 7.0

#4

Post by YesSureThing » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 5:33 PM UTC

headcanon wrote: post #2

Every time Electron is mentioned I bust out the popcorn for the inevitable hate spewed towards it: "Javascript is a terrible language and no one should use it" "Separate instances of chrome for every app is dumb and consumes too much memory" "Qt is amazing and elegant and desktop-native. Why isn't everyone just using Qt?"

I would use Uno.platform . C++ is also a terrible language.

Re: Electron 7.0

#5

Post by scrollaway » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 5:33 PM UTC

I'm bullish on Electron. I think it's just a couple of technical advancements away from being the ultimate desktop toolkit.

For context, I love and have worked a ton with Qt, and I much prefer Qt UIs as a user. But Electron has brought true cross-platform development to all platforms (Including Linux!). If it weren't for Electron, I wouldn't even have a bunch of the apps I use today. Hell, I wouldn't have a good IDE, and I don't think I'd be as good in Typescript had I not been a day-1 VS Code user.

I think the main thing preventing it from "feeling" good to most users is the most common complaint on HN about how each individual app is its own version of Chrome. This sucks; it's heavy, it's laggy, and users feel it even instinctively.

OSes and frameworks have tried to solve this a bazillion ways. Edge WebView, Android WebView, Qt WebView, QtWebkit, whatever the iexplore stuff was in XP, …. Electron might have the opportunity to actually solve this.

If it does, honestly, to hell with anything else. I'm sure over time the web world will gravitate towards a fairly common set of widgets that will, at one point or another be standardized. We'll reinvent UI frameworks under a different name, except this time they'll be running under the ultimate cross-platform framework.

Re: Electron 7.0

#6

Post by Hendrikto » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 5:33 PM UTC

headcanon wrote: post #2

Every time Electron is mentioned I bust out the popcorn for the inevitable hate spewed towards it: "Javascript is a terrible language and no one should use it" "Separate instances of chrome for every app is dumb and consumes too much memory" "Qt is amazing and elegant and desktop-native. Why isn't everyone just using Qt?"

> "Separate instances of chrome for every app is dumb and consumes too much memory"

That one is true though. Different Electron apps could at least share the runtime.

Re: Electron 7.0

#7

Post by brylie » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 5:33 PM UTC

Is there ongoing work to reduce the memory footprint of Electron apps? I'm genuinely curious.

Re: Electron 7.0

#8

Post by rafaelvasco » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 5:34 PM UTC

headcanon wrote: post #2

Every time Electron is mentioned I bust out the popcorn for the inevitable hate spewed towards it: "Javascript is a terrible language and no one should use it" "Separate instances of chrome for every app is dumb and consumes too much memory" "Qt is amazing and elegant and desktop-native. Why isn't everyone just using Qt?"

Only second one is a really valid point;

Re: Electron 7.0

#9

Post by _bxg1 » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 5:34 PM UTC

Razengan wrote: post #3

Since this is inevitably going to generate some discussion over native apps vs. Electron (ah there's already a fellow comment about it), I'd like to point out an example that is important to me of why Electron is an inferior experience for users: In the GitHub Desktop client, which is an Electron app, I can't spell check my commit messages, something that every text field in every native macOS app gets for free.

Web text fields should also support that functionality, so it may be a question of GitHub breaking/disabling it in some way.

Re: Electron 7.0

#10

Post by rafaelvasco » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 5:35 PM UTC

brylie wrote: post #7

Is there ongoing work to reduce the memory footprint of Electron apps? I'm genuinely curious.

I hope so;