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Deno Desktop

docs.deno.com

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Re: Deno Desktop

#71

Post by Culonavirus »

jorisw wrote: post #3

> Web technology is the most widely-known UI toolkit in the world. Poor choice of words there IMHO. The reason Electron apps get a lot of flak is because they are everything _but_ a UI toolkit. They consistently miss the mark in adopting UI patterns from their host OS. Web tech is just web tech. Yes it will allow you to render a button, but even unstyled, the button won't necessarily look native to the OS, and will v…

That is not why people use Electron. The goal is not and never was to just be a "UI toolkit" and "adopting UI patterns from their host OS".

Chromium has so much stuff packed into it, its insane. All that utility comes with Electron. And that's a good thing.

If you ever worked with video, for example, you know that having the full power of a modern browser in a desktop app is a game changer. Video playback (not to mention transcoding, which is also possible with modern web and webcodecs) is a complex beast, implementing that yourself is massive undertaking, not to mention in a desktop app that is supposed to work on win/mac/lin. I've built apps with Electron in tens of hours that would otherwise take me tens of days or more (and thats with AI because I'm not a video expert).

Re: Deno Desktop

#73

Post by wiseowise »

jorisw wrote: post #3

> Web technology is the most widely-known UI toolkit in the world. Poor choice of words there IMHO. The reason Electron apps get a lot of flak is because they are everything _but_ a UI toolkit. They consistently miss the mark in adopting UI patterns from their host OS. Web tech is just web tech. Yes it will allow you to render a button, but even unstyled, the button won't necessarily look native to the OS, and will v…

> Web tech is just web tech. Yes it will allow you to render a button, but even unstyled, the button won't necessarily look native to the OS, and will vary between browsers.

The irritating, and unnecessary, pedantry.

Re: Deno Desktop

#74

Post by wiseowise »

noufalibrahim wrote: post #49
conradludgate wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it a poor choice of words? It might not be "native" UI, but they never claimed as such. I've always felt that native UI on Linux always looks incredibly ugly and I'd much rather use a nicely styled HTML+CSS layout instead. In my experience, Electron mostly gets flak for being bloated and slow, it not being native is sometimes a secondary point people add on top. I've always wanted to build a direct-browser int…

I don't mind the idea of using HTML components and widgets to style desktop applications. CSS and the DOM are widely known and reusing those for desktop apps is probably a good idea. The problem, as you've pointed out, is that electron apps are bloated and slow. If they became the default and my editor, chat client, terminal, and everything else that I keep open were just thin layers around web applications, I'd rath…

There’s a point where it stops scaling in the browser, whether it’s due to scale or poor practices. For example Slack is annoyingly slow to start up and work in my FF, but works OK as an Electron app.

Re: Deno Desktop

#75

Post by LunaSea »

jorisw wrote: post #3

> Web technology is the most widely-known UI toolkit in the world. Poor choice of words there IMHO. The reason Electron apps get a lot of flak is because they are everything _but_ a UI toolkit. They consistently miss the mark in adopting UI patterns from their host OS. Web tech is just web tech. Yes it will allow you to render a button, but even unstyled, the button won't necessarily look native to the OS, and will v…

Who cares if it looks native?

Native UIs change all the time too and not always for the better.

Re: Deno Desktop

#76

Post by vintermann »

smackeyacky wrote: post #67
jorisw wrote: post #3

> Web technology is the most widely-known UI toolkit in the world. Poor choice of words there IMHO. The reason Electron apps get a lot of flak is because they are everything _but_ a UI toolkit. They consistently miss the mark in adopting UI patterns from their host OS. Web tech is just web tech. Yes it will allow you to render a button, but even unstyled, the button won't necessarily look native to the OS, and will v…

Looking native has long left the station as an objection about a UI. Like 25 years ago. Nobody gives a damn since Microsoft stopped giving a damn.

I'm not part of the Apple world, but I thought they gave a damn?

Re: Deno Desktop

#77

Post by vintermann »

p-e-w wrote: post #57
jorisw wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consistency is a large factor in any good design, UI design more so.

That’s why HN users constantly advocate for Vim, a program in which every single thing works completely differently from every other modern application.

Yes, if there's one lesson from historical UI research that still holds, it's that mode switching is expensive. That's why people install vi plugins everywhere.

Wait...

Re: Deno Desktop

#79

Post by jabwd »

vintermann wrote: post #76
smackeyacky wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking native has long left the station as an objection about a UI. Like 25 years ago. Nobody gives a damn since Microsoft stopped giving a damn.

I'm not part of the Apple world, but I thought they gave a damn?

Nah they stopped caring as well. Developing an application for macOS is hell nowadays. I hate the state of things but both Apple and Microsoft dropped the ball. Linux is even worse, so yeah I don't see a reality out of this unless we actually create something that surpasses the web in all measures.

Re: Deno Desktop

#80

Post by whizzter »

ahartmetz wrote: post #60
debazel wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ironically the only group of users I've found that actually care about native UI, are other developers and Mac purist.

I have seen users having trouble with pixel soup UIs. They may not think "This should be in a native toolkit", but they do think "How the hell do I subscribe to a folder in the new Outlook?".

Right, but bad UI's was not uncommon before webviews, if anything the spartan-ness of the web often simpified patterns whilst reliance on weird hotkeys in desktop apps isn't uncommon.
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