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React Native for Windows and Mac

microsoft.github.io

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Re: React Native for Windows and Mac

#301

Post by vijaybritto »

jakear wrote: post #244
pier25 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A fine grained capability system for packages would dramatically improve the safety profile I think Deno does that (the new project by Node's original creator): https://blog.logrocket.com/what-is-deno/

Deno gives all packages the same permissions of the main app. So if your app can make network requests, so can every dependency you use. It’s not a great situation. I’ve brought this up to them and their response is that per-package permissions would be too difficult to implement.

Yes, checking everyone at the main door is indeed easier than checking everyone at every single point of contact. It needs a vast architectural change compared to current implementation as you need to enforce those rules at runtime!

Re: React Native for Windows and Mac

#302

Post by scarface74 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #298
scarface74 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Useful" as long as you don't care about battery life, memory usage, taking advantage of features of the host platform, or the native UI. As an end user why do I care about "openness"? If I pay a premium for my platform, why would I want second rate cross platform software?

> If I pay a premium for my platform this is something that you might value but I think it's fair to say it is already a minority position. phones and the web have become the primary platform for software delivery, and people do not treat their desktop if they even have one as some sort of premium platform, it's a terminal for the internet. at this point, people are probably more familiar with the look and feel of we…

Follow the money. People pay for what they value. Who is paying money for desktop software besides games, Office 365, and the Adobe Creative Suite?

Who values desktop software enough to pay for it? I know in the Mac market at least, the few indy developers making money are not writing apps using cross platform SDKs.

Re: React Native for Windows and Mac

#303

Post by tluyben2 »

c-smile wrote: post #227
Sophistifunk wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HTML is half of the problem, the DOM is just fundamentally unsuited for app UI rendering, and CSS is a nightmare when applied to UI controls rather than text documents. What we need is a cross platform well-thought-out scene graph like Flash had or Flutter (kinda) has.

> the DOM is just fundamentally unsuited for app UI rendering... Consider the following: Native UI: is a tree of widgets. Each widget has sematic properties / attributes. Each widget may have style properties (colors ,fonts, etc.). Each widget has exactly on parent and may have multiple children. There is an API for all of these. HTML/DOM UI: Same as above, just replace "widget" by "element". Could you explain then w…

The biggest problem I have with html/css is that the outcome seems unpredictable; I sit with very experienced web devs and still have to do trial and error sometimes to know where what will be and of what size. I hear, way to often, when I (backend/embedded dev) ask how to ‘not make X happen’ something like ‘try this or this’ after they check my css. How is that software development if you have to guess how things work? Maybe it is because I am a backend dev, but we have this issue far less with native dev; they just say ‘do this’ and indeed it works as expected.

Re: React Native for Windows and Mac

#304

Post by Yabood »

gitgud wrote: post #206
exacube wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be misinformed; according to https://medium.com/flutter/hummingbird-building-flutter-for-... Flutter for Web uses HTML & CSS where it can, and falls back to Canvas where it can't. Flutter for Web is still on Beta, so lets see where it lands. Today, it seems to implement some PWA practices and lazyloading to try and get some performance.

Well that article is from 2018 and kind of overemphasises the HTML and CSS where it can. Checkout the official [1] Flutter web demos. Even the simplest [2] example renders basically every part of the UI (including text!!) within canvas elements, which is a bit crazy to me... but yes it's still Beta, so we'll see what they can improve [1] https://flutter.github.io/samples/#?platform=web [2] https://flutter.github.io/s…

I wonder how SEO is handled for web applications built with Flutter since its mostly canvas.

Re: React Native for Windows and Mac

#305

Post by mythz »

realharo wrote: post #295
mythz wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would create react app add more run-time dependencies? Isn't that just Babel and stuff used for building? You can see all the dependencies it installs by running: $ npx create-react-app my-app > Also, with TypeScript, Babel becomes completely unnecessary. Right, as per my comment it's also my preferred approach: > My preference these days is to avoid npm/yarn all together and just use TypeScript watch In genera…

I just ran that. It took a long time, and the progress bar showed fetching 1381 packages. Definitely https://i.redd.it/i428f2ki0ho01.jpg . However, the resulting `package.json` only shows 3 dependencies: react, react-dom and react-scripts. After `yarn build`, it added 3 more things from `@testing-library` ( https://testing-library.com/ ), I assume those things won't make it into the production bundle. react and react…

Right, each time a new project is created it contributes to global warming. The entire dependency matrix is what impacts normal development workflow, e.g. everytime I tried to update an old Webpack SPA project there would be always something that was broken that I'd have to hunt down & fix.

> No idea about React Native.

The OP suggests it's worse. But I no longer use React Native as I kept running into bugs & UI issues that were never fixed. I ended up reporting a few with complete repro's but didn't look like they were ever looked at, instead after a few months they decided to triage their 1000s of open issues, to get back to zero issue inbox.

IMO React Native is architecturally flawed to run into so many issues when creating normal Apps after years of development, maybe if there were more developer resources on the team it would be more manageable. But I believe Flutter has a much better architecture [1] which feels much more integrated & polished that results in a more responsive app that works as advertised.

[1] https://dart.dev/platforms

Re: React Native for Windows and Mac

#306

Post by onion2k »

scarface74 wrote: post #278
onion2k wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It keeps the cost down. A lot of end users care more about cost than literally anything else.

How many end users pay for non-game desktop software at all? How many successful (ie profitable) companies have made money selling desktop software using cross platform frameworks like React Native?

How many successful (ie profitable) companies have made money selling desktop software using cross platform frameworks like React Native?

React Native for Windows and Mac specifically, none. We commenting on an article about its launch. It's a bit early to be talking about that.

Cross-platform frameworks like Electron or Flutter, loads. VSCode, Skype, Discord, WhatsApp Desktop all use it. Of course you might argue that they're all selling services rather than software but that the point really is that the companies authoring those apps want to keep costs down, give users the same experience everywhere, and believe cross-platform apps can give users a good experience.

Re: React Native for Windows and Mac

#307

Post by realharo »

mythz wrote: post #305
realharo wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just ran that. It took a long time, and the progress bar showed fetching 1381 packages. Definitely https://i.redd.it/i428f2ki0ho01.jpg . However, the resulting `package.json` only shows 3 dependencies: react, react-dom and react-scripts. After `yarn build`, it added 3 more things from `@testing-library` ( https://testing-library.com/ ), I assume those things won't make it into the production bundle. react and react…

Right, each time a new project is created it contributes to global warming. The entire dependency matrix is what impacts normal development workflow, e.g. everytime I tried to update an old Webpack SPA project there would be always something that was broken that I'd have to hunt down & fix. > No idea about React Native. The OP suggests it's worse. But I no longer use React Native as I kept running into bugs & UI issu…

Flutter itself seems nice, but Dart as a language is a pretty big downgrade from TypeScript.

For mobile right now, the easiest, most headache-free solution may actually be to forget about cross-platform and just do separate Android and iOS native apps. You won't need to do things like hunt for a bunch of 3rd party libraries whenever you need to use Bluetooth or something.

Once SwiftUI and Jetpack Compose mature, that process should be much more pleasant as well.

Re: React Native for Windows and Mac

#308

Post by ascorbic »

gvjddbnvdrbv wrote: post #300
hombre_fatal wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As an end user why do I care about "openness"? If I pay a premium for my platform, why would I want second rate cross platform software? Falsehoods HNers believe about how people buy/use software. Didn't stop Slack/Discord from become ubiquitous. "But native tho" just becomes a circlejerk. Talking about what users care about, most people don't know what native means nor if a given app is it. They don't know if Zoom…

I remember when Spotify 'upgraded' from a native to a js application on MacOS. It bricked my wife's computer. She never installed Spotify again. This is someone who doesn't usually care about software. She did care about that annoyance.

It works fine for hundreds of millions of other users

Re: React Native for Windows and Mac

#309

Post by dmix »

chirau wrote: post #89
bsaul wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same feeling here. still waiting for that killer flutter app to convince me one can actually build a real app with decent latency in flutter

What do you mean by killer exactly? Splice is now on flutter, including web. I'd say that is a pretty demanding app.

I checked out Splice and they are using Angular/Rails for their web app? Both builtwith and HTML source code for their marketing website and logged in app indicate this.

I watched their talk video [1] and they seemed to have only built an MVPish app using Flutter (ie, less than a year using it + a team of two devs). And it only seems to be for the desktop app?

Maybe I'm missing where they are using it on the web... but I wouldn't call this a huge buy in.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcjPNKmyrlM

Re: React Native for Windows and Mac

#310

Post by what-the-grump »

scarface74 wrote: post #232
hombre_fatal wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As an end user why do I care about "openness"? If I pay a premium for my platform, why would I want second rate cross platform software? Falsehoods HNers believe about how people buy/use software. Didn't stop Slack/Discord from become ubiquitous. "But native tho" just becomes a circlejerk. Talking about what users care about, most people don't know what native means nor if a given app is it. They don't know if Zoom…

Let's not forget that MS Teams has more paying users than Slack.... How many people know that Slack is battery draining monstrosity? The only people that pay for Slack are companies. The definition of Enterprise Software is where the user is not the customer.

Hmm this one is tough Office 365 has more paying users on teams. I doubt anyone is paying for teams, also they are not direct competitors. We use both, likely to get phones with teams in the future as well.
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