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Microsoft Teams 2 will use half the memory, dropping Electron for Edge Webview2

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Re: Microsoft Teams 2 will use half the memory, dropping Electron for Edge Webview2

#171

Post by kaba0 »

jodrellblank wrote: post #165
nlitened wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I understand correctly, Telegram has native apps on all platforms, and they are super fast and slick.

I've never used Telegram, but I suspect the Teams integration with SharePoint/Office365 and the (terrible) way Teams tries to be cake icing and floor wax by integrating file store, wiki, document library, telephone, whiteboard, plugin app ecosystem and webhook scripting environment with Windows ACLs makes it more complex than an independent chat/call/video call program?

Perhaps a bit? But as others wrote, they have 50 people. How many does Microsoft have (and of course, Google, Facebook are also bad at it)

Re: Microsoft Teams 2 will use half the memory, dropping Electron for Edge Webview2

#172

Post by MaxBarraclough »

Hamuko wrote: post #35
chrisseaton wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I want a chat service with native apps But why? 'Native' is a tool, not a goal, surely? What's the underlying goal you want to achieve, and do you really need native to achieve that?

> What's the underlying goal you want to achieve Performance, small bundle sizes and native UI widgets. And judging by all of the Electron apps failing in these departments, I guess you really do need native apps.

It's the memory bloat that stands out to me. Many modern laptops have 8GB of RAM. (Curiously this number hasn't really changed in the last 9 years.) 500MB of bloat isn't a trivial fraction of that.

Also, an application that runs constantly in the background, is under a greater obligation to make efficient use of system resources.

> judging by all of the Electron apps failing in these departments, I guess you really do need native apps.

I'd put that differently: solutions heavily based on web technologies seem to consistently fail to be anywhere near as efficient as solutions that use conventional toolkits. (Sometimes someone will suggest this isn't true if the web-based solution is well implemented, but they are never able to give an example of such an application.) On most platforms, Qt doesn't count as being truly native, but it's still far more efficient than Electron.

Re: Microsoft Teams 2 will use half the memory, dropping Electron for Edge Webview2

#173

Post by ratww »

samat wrote: post #85
nlitened wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I understand correctly, Telegram has native apps on all platforms, and they are super fast and slick.

They are the one example of messaging done right on the client side. And it maddens me that their whole team, including ops and backend is like 50 people. At the same time, they used some pretty unconventional ways to find brilliant people. For example, for iOS and Mac and android apps, they simply held a contest for the best open source app fitting succinct and reasonable requirements. The winner got sizable prize a…

> And it maddens me that their whole team, including ops and backend is like 50 people.

But that's how they get so much accomplished. Fred Brooks was correct in 1975 and is still right in 2021. Throwing headcount at a problem only delays it.

Re: Microsoft Teams 2 will use half the memory, dropping Electron for Edge Webview2

#174

Post by asdjlkadsjklads »

marcellus23 wrote: post #112
justapassenger wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which means they know extremely well what a costly and complex process it is.

And the result of that knowledge is a worse experience for users. However you frame it, users are losing because MS doesn’t want to shell out the cash for good UX.

Losing, but still buying in.

Re: Microsoft Teams 2 will use half the memory, dropping Electron for Edge Webview2

#175

Post by eaa »

DavidVoid wrote: post #126

Hopefully they'll make it easy to be signed into multiple Teams accounts at the same time. Currently, you have to use a script in order to launch multiple Teams instances [1]. [1] https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams/multi...

By the way, you can sign into multiple accounts in Teams for Android.

Re: Microsoft Teams 2 will use half the memory, dropping Electron for Edge Webview2

#176

Post by cudgy »

dagw wrote: post #156
cudgy wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the purpose of the tool then? What improvement does it have over email? The main problem that I have with these tools is the increased number of distractions. There is an expectation when using a chat tool that someone will respond promptly, but this rarely is useful for the person that’s receiving the question. For most knowledge workers, frequent distractions come at a very high cost. Notions that we are go…

What improvement does it have over email? One is that everything gets sorted under the right project subheading. Discussions about Project FooBar end up in a different channel than discussions about Project Blork. The second is that I can just post on the Blork channel and know that everybody currently connected to project Blork will see it. Equally if I'm not actively working on FooBar I can easily ignore everything…

There were tools called bulletin boards or wikis created decades ago that can accomplish what is described above. All of these chatty tools require discipline by those making posts to not refer to other projects within the silo of the channel. I’ve found this to almost never happen. Email allows for normal conversational encompassing communication method that does not rely upon siloing information about projects into their respective channels.

For example, if Blork and FooBar Projects are related In a comment that is made in one of the project channels, it is not easy to navigate their relationships in these tools Without explicitly adding tags to refer to the other channels. All these tags then create a spiderweb of useless links for the most part, and the information flow is weird and difficult to follow in many cases. This model can be advantageous for example when referencing checkins or other tickets within comments of a bug/story reporting system. However, bug reporting systems typically have fewer parties involved in the comments, so things don’t get quite as out of hand.

Re: Microsoft Teams 2 will use half the memory, dropping Electron for Edge Webview2

#177

Post by kaba0 »

dafelst wrote: post #149
est wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everytime Electron is mentioned, VSC will be presented as counter example. The problem is VSC is the only snappy Electron app out there, Microsoft spend millions optimizing it, while most other Electron apps are crap. Native programs can be made snappy easily . That's the whole point.

But then with native you have to pay the cross platform price. Which is higher do you think? With Electron you get cross platform more or less for free and ostensibly you can make it faster later. Don't get me wrong, I love doing native work, but as someone who has to deal with cross-platform issues in native applications (well games) on the daily, I can tell you that even with massive code reuse and good interfaces,…

I mean, you are talking about making a goddamn text editor faster — it’s just ridiculous. There should be no lag whatsoever when it comes to UIs in 2021.

Re: Microsoft Teams 2 will use half the memory, dropping Electron for Edge Webview2

#179

Post by ratww »

MattGaiser wrote: post #51
Bancakes wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are trillion dollar companies, I'm sure they can afford to lead the software industry for the greater good.

I don't think RAM conservation is high on anyone's list of initiatives to improve the world. The resource consumption of Electron is mostly of interest to computer scientists who like to see how small and efficient they can make something. But in this case, it does not really matter.

No. It also matters to the users of the laptop and to the people who have to buy it, as using too much RAM can lead to slowness due to swapping and can make older laptops unusable.

It's basically having a third-party forcing programmed obsolescence at your device.

Re: Microsoft Teams 2 will use half the memory, dropping Electron for Edge Webview2

#180

Post by ratww »

Mary-Jane wrote: post #49
Bancakes wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are trillion dollar companies, I'm sure they can afford to lead the software industry for the greater good.

What 'greater good' can possibly be achieved by having to literally write the same app 5 different times?

They could at least be trying to use the native multi-platform technologies they have bought/developed, like Xamarin or MAUI.
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