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Electron 7.0

electronjs.org

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Re: Electron 7.0

#41

Post by luckydata »

Razengan wrote: post #17
scrollaway wrote: post #5

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,…

I'd rather see SwiftUI or something like it ported to other systems with a "driver" that translates it to each platform's 100% native UI. It's already amazing in how it abstracts common elements for such distinct environments like desktop, phone, TV and watch while still exposing OS-specific features. Why not other operating systems?

I don't. The reason is UI kits on different OSs are so different that allowing this stuff makes for haggard looking apps. Using the web at least brings consistency to the experience. There's no workaround I can think of, you either write one UI per OS (even with QT you still need to adjust for conventions, spacing etc...) or you make an OS agnostic UI with Web tech.

Re: Electron 7.0

#42

Post by weego »

brylie wrote: post #25
YesIndeedSir wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes - WebAssembly. It would hopefully kill the whole thing as an end game.

I have a, probably misguided, fear that We Assembly will inadvertently usher in an era of read only web, basically breaking the "view source" idea almost unique to the Web.

It's going to be the next iteration of the "we could so we did" trend loop that drove Flash from a good tool to a ubiquitous disease

Re: Electron 7.0

#43

Post by Razengan »

luckydata wrote: post #41
Razengan wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather see SwiftUI or something like it ported to other systems with a "driver" that translates it to each platform's 100% native UI. It's already amazing in how it abstracts common elements for such distinct environments like desktop, phone, TV and watch while still exposing OS-specific features. Why not other operating systems?

I don't. The reason is UI kits on different OSs are so different that allowing this stuff makes for haggard looking apps. Using the web at least brings consistency to the experience. There's no workaround I can think of, you either write one UI per OS (even with QT you still need to adjust for conventions, spacing etc...) or you make an OS agnostic UI with Web tech.

> (even with QT you still need to adjust for conventions, spacing etc...)

That is what I'm talking about: SwiftUI automatically uses the recommended conventions for spacing, padding, etc. which are different for macOS vs. iOS etc., and it also takes user environment settings into account, like font sizes and other accessibility options.

Re: Electron 7.0

#44

Post by choeger »

Hey, another electron thread. Wait a second, did someone already mention how horrible Javascript is? The memory consumption? The minimal integration into the OS/desktop (think accessibility)? Hmm ok, I need something new...

Here it comes: chrome is inherently instable. The Google developers give a shit about their dependency management and have trillions of open source projects just literally copied into their trunk. They also don't provide any API to speak of, chromium as a library does not exist, and don't get me started about the arcane build process of chrome.

Re: Electron 7.0

#45

Post by shaki-dora »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #30
Hendrikto wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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.

Except they cannot, Chromium (or is it Blink?) changes too frequently to reliably code for one version and expect backward compatibility of future releases. Electron versions could be shared libraries... except again BC breaking releases proliferate.

Websites manage to target different versions, and browsers, and even device classes just fine.

Re: Electron 7.0

#46

Post by eicossa »

windsurfer wrote: post #35
eicossa wrote: post #23

Wait ... let me see if I can anticipate the top comment "Electron consumes so many resources ... Why so resource hungry ... My workstation already runs Chrome, can't have electron apps bogging it down ... Slack runs on Electron ... VSCode is the only good Electron app ... Why are we doing this ... Dennis Ritchie would be turning in his grave" This topic could honestly trigger the "parse regex with html" kind of reply…

Well, Slack is currently taking almost 3 GB of memory on my machine. Not entirely sure if that's due to Electron or Slack, but I have never found an Electron app that didn't consume vast swathes of memory. https://imgur.com/GscRFD7.png

Truth. When I first discovered Electron apps, i was amazed. Now i just walk away.

I'm not saying any of these comments surrounding Electron are invalid, it's just that these things represent a kind of truthful circlejerk around the topic.

I find it humanizes the HN crowd tbh. Otherwise most of the comments here are so aloof and definitive. Electron comments brings out all the normal folks :)

Re: Electron 7.0

#47

Post by marshallofsound »

choeger wrote: post #44

Hey, another electron thread. Wait a second, did someone already mention how horrible Javascript is? The memory consumption? The minimal integration into the OS/desktop (think accessibility)? Hmm ok, I need something new... Here it comes: chrome is inherently instable. The Google developers give a shit about their dependency management and have trillions of open source projects just literally copied into their trunk.…

Disclaimer: Electron dev

So few quick things, the projects that are copied are done so to guarantee deterministic builds in an isolated build environment (no dependencies on third party systems).

The API you say they don't provide is literally the API that Electron uses. --> https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/HEAD/conten...

And as for the build process, eh, it's kinda slow but it's hardly arcane. On linux you can run like 4 commands and it'll build Chromeium.

Re: Electron 7.0

#48

Post by laichzeit0 »

eicossa wrote: post #23

Wait ... let me see if I can anticipate the top comment "Electron consumes so many resources ... Why so resource hungry ... My workstation already runs Chrome, can't have electron apps bogging it down ... Slack runs on Electron ... VSCode is the only good Electron app ... Why are we doing this ... Dennis Ritchie would be turning in his grave" This topic could honestly trigger the "parse regex with html" kind of reply…

This is no different than every C thread turning into a Rust evangelism crusade. For me personally it’s interesting because it corroborates the fact that stereotypes do exist, and generalizations can be made about groups of people, to the dismay of people against generalizations.

Re: Electron 7.0

#49

Post by blueprint »

scrollaway wrote: post #32
Razengan wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather see SwiftUI or something like it ported to other systems with a "driver" that translates it to each platform's 100% native UI. It's already amazing in how it abstracts common elements for such distinct environments like desktop, phone, TV and watch while still exposing OS-specific features. Why not other operating systems?

Insert any framework in place of SwiftUI. You're describing Qt, essentially. The approach has been tried, and succeeded to some degree. But the web is the only app where cross-platform is the default , and it's truly hard to avoid it. Even if the widgets all look different. Even if nothing looks native (people got used to it anyway). And to be clear I want the status quo to improve in this regard, especially in terms…

> But the web is the only app where cross-platform is the default

That's just because it describes its own embedded rendering system.

Re: Electron 7.0

#50

Post by millstone »

There's hate directed at performance, but Electron apps are just profoundly buggy.

For example in Slack:

1. Non-functional items are routinely offered in the main menu and context menu.

2. The Undo and Redo menu items often just don't work. These do different things than the command key equivalents which should never happen.

3. It is easy to get into a state with multiple blinking insertion points.

4. The inactive appearance is identical to the active appearance.

etc etc.

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