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Electron 7.0

electronjs.org

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Re: Electron 7.0

#161

Post by inferiorhuman »

cweagans wrote: post #157
inferiorhuman wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't rag on software teams for making trade-offs based on the resources they have. It's not just that app devs aren't making non Linux/x86 apps, the problems are that those devs now cannot make non Linux apps. Period. In spite of this lack of portability they're now crowing about how portable and awesome their "cross-platform" app is. All of this to provide the consistently mediocre Electron experience.

Alternatively, you could roll up your sleeves and add support for whatever obscure OS you want to Electron and then have an entire world of apps available to you. Mediocre and working > not existing

Alternatively, you could roll up your sleeves and add support for whatever obscure OS you want to Electron and then have an entire world of apps available to you.

To what end? The Electron devs have explicitly stated they will reject patches adding support for other platforms. Node is just as bad (letting trivial patches that would fix compilation on FreeBSD just fester).

I've already looked at the folks trying to port Electron to FreeBSD and honestly the build system on its own is absolutely horrifying. Qt (even Gtk) is far superior in this regard.

Re: Electron 7.0

#162

Post by hellofunk »

sroussey wrote: post #154
pritambaral wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use Qt with closed source software, under the LGPL license that you don't have to pay for. Only the binaries that have Qt code need to be open. Don't statically link Qt libs into your closed-source code and you're good.

And put that in an app store?

Yes, even on iOS.

Re: Electron 7.0

#163

Post by nercht12 »

bitwize wrote: post #122
mshroyer wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But Electron has brought true cross-platform development to all platforms (Including Linux!). Only if we restrict " all platforms" to mean Windows, macOS, and Linux. Building and porting Electron appears to be a horrific experience [1], which limits its cross-platform utility. It's only recently that someone pulled the heroics of getting Electron 4 (!) into FreeBSD ports; I still can't run VS Code on OpenBSD. Meanw…

> Only if we restrict "all platforms" to mean Windows, macOS, and Linux. "It's cross-platform! It works on Windows 95 and Windows NT!"

Come on, guys. Don't downvote him. He was being funny. X) Along those lines, we can say anything made for ChristOS is definitely cross-platform. XD (There's a double pun in that one if you know Greek.)

Re: Electron 7.0

#164

Post by plexicle »

windsurfer wrote: post #95
vips7L wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack is currently only using 90MB on my machine...

Are you sure you are looking at all running processes? Slack splits it's memory usage across multiple, as you can see from my screenshot.

700MB on my machine. Logged in to 4 active workspaces.

Re: Electron 7.0

#165

Post by didibus »

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 thought QT worked across all platforms?

Also, I think JVM UI frameworks still offer more than people believe. JavaFx and even the good old Swing work cross platform. Compared to Electron apps, they even hold in terms of performance and memory use.

Re: Electron 7.0

#166

Post by saagarjha »

fsloth wrote: post #159
dewey wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, and probably others, the main issue with Electron isn't the speed or even resource usage. It's that it ignores common UX/UI conventions you expect from a native app which still makes me prefer native macOS apps.

Personally I'm fine with application specific UI schemes. It's a bit silly every application would follow the same guidelines as applications are intended to do different things. Platform UX/UI conventions place too strict limitations on innovation. The original point - that people would get confused from non-platform UI schemes - has been proven kind of moot since most games have their own domain specific UI schemes…

> It's a bit silly every application would follow the same guidelines as applications are intended to do different things. Platform UX/UI conventions place too strict limitations on innovation.

They really don’t. Have you taken a look at the thriving ecosystem of native, powerful macOS apps that follow platform conventions?

Re: Electron 7.0

#167

Post by saagarjha »

httpsterio wrote: post #149
dewey wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't necessarily say it's just the way it looks, it's also how things work that you get for "free" when you use the native UI toolkit. Examples would be shortcuts, tabbing through form fields, how a file explorer works and other small things. The file explorer in VSCode for example doesn't really behave like a native one, you have to manually refresh, you can't easily drag and drop and everything just feels a b…

Just last week I added shortcuts to our MacOS and Windows Electron app in about 15 minutes. I didn't read any documentation and I'm not even a developer, just a designer. I can barely make a proper if loop in js and I can't tell the difference between a method and a function either. Electron is sooo simple. I mean, we've run into some pretty interesting issues like with hardware acceleration and difference in color a…

There’s a lot more to getting an app to feel native than just shortcuts, unfortunately. A native platform toolkit will do the right thing for your platform, sometimes even if you don’t know what the right thing is or that it exists.

Re: Electron 7.0

#168

Post by Rapzid »

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,…

Something unfortunate is that last I checked React didn't really have a good UI lib to give an "app" feel. So something like VSCode or what not would not really be feasible in the most popular libs.. Would be great if there were some UI libs on par with Qt and the like.

EDIT: I fail-skimmed your comment and missed the Qt mention! Glad there are more folks out there seeing the same.

Re: Electron 7.0

#169

Post by vips7L »

rolleiflex wrote: post #77
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 release two apps, across 3 OSes, in somewhat of a bimonthly cadence with a low defect rate. That’s 6 different binaries. I’m a solo founder. I know people like to rag on Electron, but without it, I wouldn’t be using something else, my apps just wouldn’t exist . It allows more people to try building more thing and that is a net positive. The speed problems and bloat issues of Electron is just shoddy programming on t…

My company does the same, except we farm out to a java process.

Re: Electron 7.0

#170

Post by bitwize »

nercht12 wrote: post #163
bitwize wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only if we restrict "all platforms" to mean Windows, macOS, and Linux. "It's cross-platform! It works on Windows 95 and Windows NT!"

Come on, guys. Don't downvote him. He was being funny. X) Along those lines, we can say anything made for ChristOS is definitely cross-platform. XD (There's a double pun in that one if you know Greek.)

I actually saw statements to that effect in popular computer media in the 90s. So I wasn't just being funny.
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