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ToDesktop – Web app to desktop app in minutes

todesktop.com

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Re: ToDesktop – Web app to desktop app in minutes

#51

Post by devmor »

davej wrote: post #41
supermatt wrote: post #2

This seems like a quick and easy way for me to have an interim version of my desktop app. I have a few questions: 1) What are the "plugins" a pro subscription gives me. I could only see info on filesystem access in the docs. 2) Likewise, what is the "restricted API" that pro subscription brings. 3) Do I have any control over the "updates". For example, when I release a native app, I would want it to "update" to that.…

> 1) What are the "plugins" a pro subscription gives me. I could only see info on filesystem access in the docs. > 2) Likewise, what is the "restricted API" that pro subscription brings. We have a bunch of plugins and are adding more all the time. Currently we have: * Active Window - Retrieve app metadata from the currently-active window of the OS. * Selected Text - Retrieve the currently-selected text from any appli…

>We don't currently block apps when subs are cancelled (except in cases of abuse) but we will likely do something in the future if a customer has cancelled their subscription but are still actively advertising their app on their site for example.

Wow, it'd take a witness stand to get me to admit something like this.

Actively seeking a method to stop your former customers from offering their finished product because they no longer see a need to pay for your service is a good reason to never use your service.

Re: ToDesktop – Web app to desktop app in minutes

#52

Post by mike_hearn »

sgc wrote: post #34
voidpepe wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct, but I still feel like we need a better way of making cross-platform desktop applications than just wrapping a webapp into a bunch of bloat. Web technologies were never meant for this and it pains me to see a messaging desktop app clog up 100s of MB of memory

We do need a better setup, but is there any more mature UI platform than HTML+ CSS +JS? I don't think the concept of wanting to used this advanced interface is wrong, just that the implementation of Electron is bloated - and that web programming culture is far too wasteful because the premise there will only be one important app on the computer. I have not tried sciter, but making a fast, light Electron alternative i…

HTML isn't really meant to be a UI platform. It's a mature hypertext platform, but for UI it isn't ideal:

• Very few core widgets. Everyone has to supply their own.

• Poor/non-existent support for menus.

• Poor support for keyboard accelerators.

• Rich text editing is ropey, and you have to supply your own UI.

• No table views, tree views, or virtualized list views.

• Multiple incompatible DSLs all of which get wrapped in practice.

• Only accessible from one programming language.

• Only recently got any built-in notion of components.

Electron is convenient because lots of people know HTML and because it lets you incrementally upgrade a pre-existing web app. But if you know you'll be on the desktop anyway there are toolkits that solve the above problems, some of which meet your requirement of being lighter whilst still using stuff like CSS or SVG. Qt fits the bill and if you're not a C++/Qt person, JavaFX also uses a dialect of CSS (which can be compiled to binary even) whilst still offering a fairly complete widget set out of the box. It can be compiled down to a fully native binary these days, and even streamed over the web (see https://www.jfx-central.com/ for a demo).

So once you leave the browser you have a far greater array of UI options available to you. Power users in particular tend to appreciate the productivity of standard desktop UI paradigms.

And they're all equally easy to distribute these days. Conveyor will ship anything, it just has some sensible defaults for Electron/JVM/Flutter apps. Fully native apps work too, though.

Re: ToDesktop – Web app to desktop app in minutes

#53

Post by toddmorey »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #11

I'll be honest: I make a concentrated effort to avoid these apps that are just a website stuffed into a (usually quite gigantic) executable for a number of reasons: - They always feel sluggish. Animations are jittery. Text input that does things (contextual search for example) jitters and jumps instead of smoothly performing it's task. - Scrolling, especially scrolling that loads content, is also often jittery and la…

I think web tech (even as resource hungry as it tends to be) is the right abstraction until your product & team is big enough to properly staff and develop for each platform. Looking at you, Slack. It's time to step up to native.

I look at it this way: Any app deploying to four platforms (web, Mac, Linux, Windows) is going to involve some level of non-native abstraction. (Whatever Adobe seems doing for their UI kit is equally terrible if not worse.)

Also: Websites are indeed software in 2023. I realized the other day that my favorite design app is Figma, and I NEVER thought I'd say that about a non-native app.

I think the optimization here is to have browsers themselves make the "desktop mode" experience much better, removing the need for Electron style projects. You shouldn't have to re-bundle the entire browser to get to it. You shouldn't have to pay $250/mo to have a reasonable installer. There should just be an install for desktop button on the web app. I believe Safari is headed this direction in the upcoming Mac OS release.

Re: ToDesktop – Web app to desktop app in minutes

#54

Post by gwbas1c »

davej wrote: post #24

Oh wow, It's exciting to see this pop up on HN. I'm Dave, founder of ToDesktop. Feel free to reply to this and I'm happy to answer any questions :).

> Is ToDesktop For Me?

> If you want to make a desktop app of a website for your personal use, ToDesktop is overkill.

I just want to point out that a lot of us "pros" learn how to use tools like this by semi-personal use.

Therefore, you might want to consider a free personal version that's crippled in a mildly annoying way: For example, no installer, don't sign the app, and have an easily-ignorable nag. (Therefore creating a situation where if I tried to distribute one of these applications for a commercial product it looks unprofessional.)

It creates a great way to "try before you buy," and it has another effect: Free consumer use of ToDesktop can make it a "household name" when developers need to use a tool like this.

I should point out that I've been doing this for at least a decade: I used to use https://fluidapp.com/ for years until I switched to the techniques built into Chrome / Edge / Brave.

Re: ToDesktop – Web app to desktop app in minutes

#55

Post by mike_hearn »

devmor wrote: post #40
mike_hearn wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think is a fair price for a solo dev trialling a small app? I'm asking because my firm makes a competitor to ToDesktop (sort of) [1], and this is a question we often get. It's free for open source apps and cheaper than ToDesktop, but the "I just want to trial an idea and not spend any money on it" use case isn't well supported by this pricing model. One possibility is a trial period, but then how long sho…

Sounds to me like "trial" apps skipping the signing process is a good option. A dev team can click the "Run Untrusted Program" button, and it serves as an incentive to upgrade before distributing.

Well, Conveyor can already self sign and produce a download page with instructions telling the users what to do. It's fine for internal demos and dev teams indeed. But browsers/operating systems will generate security warnings, and so that might be offputting to end users. You'd be unsure if your app was struggling due to that, or due to some product flaw.

Then there's the question of how long a trial would last. It could take months until someone decides whether their app is going to fly or not.

Re: ToDesktop – Web app to desktop app in minutes

#56

Post by philote »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #46
philote wrote: post #27

For those more knowledgeable than me, why use something like this over making your web app into a PWA?

The installation experience for PWAs is still pretty poor. I've seen very few good examples of PWAs (probably because of this). And I've even bothered implementing a few. My conclusion after doing that: waste of time, users mostly ignore PWAs.

I thought you could publish them on app stores. What makes the installation process poor?

Re: ToDesktop – Web app to desktop app in minutes

#58

Post by mble »

loremchecksum wrote: post #16
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #11

I'll be honest: I make a concentrated effort to avoid these apps that are just a website stuffed into a (usually quite gigantic) executable for a number of reasons: - They always feel sluggish. Animations are jittery. Text input that does things (contextual search for example) jitters and jumps instead of smoothly performing it's task. - Scrolling, especially scrolling that loads content, is also often jittery and la…

I sometimes wonder what the total emission cost of these non-native developments amounts to.

Huge most probably. The fact that we need to upgrade our hardware every three or so years, not because our workflow changed, but because every app is written as cheaply as possible shows how much of an impact it has.

Re: ToDesktop – Web app to desktop app in minutes

#59

Post by resonious »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #8
resonious wrote: post #5

I gotta say, I'm not super convinced by a lot of the points on here. > Native notifications Web browsers already let you create these. > Auto updates Browsers usually already do this too! And also they will fetch your app fresh on each visit by default... So I'm not sure why this is a problem we need to solve for web apps. > Native installers So, more friction? Just visiting the webpage was too simple? Anyway some of…

Strictly fwiw - There is a subset of people, myself included, who have old fashioned preference for native apps. In particular, a few likely obsolete perspectives : 1. I can have more ownership of the native app. I can make a copy on my NAS and install as needed 2. I can have more control over what it does. I can deny the firewall and whatever it does it'll do only locally. 3. Native app feels more "once and done". W…

This is totally good. But I do wonder how much these points apply to a native app generated from a website using the tool in the link. I get the feeling it will still be very SaaSy (a la Slack's "native app").

Re: ToDesktop – Web app to desktop app in minutes

#60

Post by gwbas1c »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #11

I'll be honest: I make a concentrated effort to avoid these apps that are just a website stuffed into a (usually quite gigantic) executable for a number of reasons: - They always feel sluggish. Animations are jittery. Text input that does things (contextual search for example) jitters and jumps instead of smoothly performing it's task. - Scrolling, especially scrolling that loads content, is also often jittery and la…

This is a consequence of poor desktop APIs: Windows / Mac installer APIs are awful; and Windows / Mac have no good "common denominator" API so everyone is stuck with HTML / CSS / Javascript. HTML / CSS / Javascript work great for documents, but are horrible abstractions for the kind of things UIs need to do.

Personally, I think we need to figure out a better cross-platform UI API. I'm still surprised that almost 30 years into the Windows / Mac duopoly that we haven't figured out yet.

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