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NeutralinoJS: Lightweight Electron alternative using native browser controls

neutralino.js.org

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Re: NeutralinoJS: Lightweight Electron alternative using native browser controls

#101
post #48

I feel like nobody cares too much if they’re running one Electron app; people do have the headroom for an extra 1-2GB of RAM usage. The problem comes when they run several Electron apps at once, and each comes with its own “base” overhead (i.e. the runtime memory consumption of the browser-runtime as a whole, independent of how many render contexts are open.) Chromium is built to share a lot of things between tabs ef…

Given that everyone brings this up every time Electron is mentioned, and Electron apps keep proliferating, I expect a future version of Windows and macOS to have Chromium bundled with the OS. There will be some platform independent open standard that Electron will use under the covers.

Native desktop apps are never coming back. It will either be Electron or mobile apps emulated on desktops.

Re: NeutralinoJS: Lightweight Electron alternative using native browser controls

#102
post #20
post #16

This is the correct way of doing it when a PWA doesn't cut it. No need to push a full browser engine when the OS already has enough of them available.

It definitely is the 'correct' way of doing it, but it will mean you use IE when in windows, which is often/normally not the correct way

He means undergrad computer science prof approved. No real business ever operated on the basis of "we shouldnt be pushing these bits when they already have perfectly good bits probably."

Re: NeutralinoJS: Lightweight Electron alternative using native browser controls

#103
post #95
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We still need to support IE 11 on our projects anyway. Welcome to the corporate world.

Not if you are shipping chrome with your application. Isn't that part of the point of electron?

Being lazy is the point of Electron.

Re: NeutralinoJS: Lightweight Electron alternative using native browser controls

#104
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We still need to support IE 11 on our projects anyway. Welcome to the corporate world.

> We still need to support IE 11 Not all of us. I'm happy to lose the 2.16% [1] in return for saving a lot in time and effort. [1] https://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php

Lucky you, I usually do internal corporate applications.

Re: NeutralinoJS: Lightweight Electron alternative using native browser controls

#105
post #87
post #16

This is the correct way of doing it when a PWA doesn't cut it. No need to push a full browser engine when the OS already has enough of them available.

What are the top reasons an PWA wouldn't cut it?

You need to access some OS features not yet exposed as Web API, or you might need to still have a version for browsers like IE 11.

Re: NeutralinoJS: Lightweight Electron alternative using native browser controls

#107
post #101
post #48

I feel like nobody cares too much if they’re running one Electron app; people do have the headroom for an extra 1-2GB of RAM usage. The problem comes when they run several Electron apps at once, and each comes with its own “base” overhead (i.e. the runtime memory consumption of the browser-runtime as a whole, independent of how many render contexts are open.) Chromium is built to share a lot of things between tabs ef…

Given that everyone brings this up every time Electron is mentioned, and Electron apps keep proliferating, I expect a future version of Windows and macOS to have Chromium bundled with the OS. There will be some platform independent open standard that Electron will use under the covers. Native desktop apps are never coming back. It will either be Electron or mobile apps emulated on desktops.

Current version of Windows already have Chromium in the form of new Edge and Microsoft seems to start pushing progressive web applications. At least they made good integration with system for them.

So, perhaps, soon we will have PWAs instead of bunch of electron apps each carrying its own Chromium.

Re: NeutralinoJS: Lightweight Electron alternative using native browser controls

#108
I don't think using a local web port for the UI of a desktop app is a good idea, at least for security reasons. I guess much of the resources of the alternative solutions are used to mitigate just that (in addition to having a powerful backend framework). So if you don't want either, than maybe it is an option, but it severly limits the scope of the architecture.

Re: NeutralinoJS: Lightweight Electron alternative using native browser controls

#109
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m currently running three Electron apps: Spotify, Skype, and VS Code. Spotify: 1083.7 MB. VS Code: 890.9 MB. Skype: 406 MB. In the past, I’ve had projects open in VS Code which have caused that number to shoot up into the multi-gigabyte range. Of course this is all anecdotal but I am pretty sure these numbers come from actual experiences that people are having with Electron apps.

Keybase also uses in the range of 600MB-1GB, and 8 processes, most of which don't exit when you exit the application. I'm not sure what Discord uses because I only run it in the browser, but I'm sure it's in the same range as all of the above. I've come up with a powershell snippet to fully quit keybase and reclaim ~1GB RAM: get-process | Where-Object {$_.path -match "keybase"} | Stop-Process

>I'm not sure what Discord uses because I only run it in the browser

Me too, and you just made me realize, there already exists a system for running Electron apps in a shared instance of Chrome, and it's installed on almost everyone's computer! You just... open the web version, in Chrome :)

Re: NeutralinoJS: Lightweight Electron alternative using native browser controls

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the uptime on that "base application" and what does it do?

https://github.com/electron/electron-quick-start ~60mb memory usage at startup.

So an "application" that literally just displays Hello World and no indication of uptime.

Right, I'm convinced.

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