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What you should know before starting node-webkit

yedingding.com

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Re: What you should know before starting node-webkit

#11

Post by Tloewald »

I've tried migrating a pair of fairly lightweight desktop applications to node-webkit from Realbasic/Xojo (which is essentially a cross-platform Visual Basic, only nicer) with some success (in once case the new application is far faster, while I haven't finished the second, but so far so good).

This is the first (simpler) application (really of interest only to Cheetah 3D users).

http://loewald.com/c3dbook/Misc-Resources/C3D-Buddy/

There's no attempt to produce a "native" UI (indeed, it's not using any frameworks) but it works very well.

I'd like to see a node-webkit-based IDE for creating node-webkit applications (I've considered trying to write one, but I do NOT have the time).

Re: What you should know before starting node-webkit

#12

Post by XorNot »

_neil wrote: post #7
XorNot wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conversely I've been a little unimpressed by some of the standout node-webkit applications. LightTable in particular just doesn't seem very smooth or easy to use when I actually sit down and use it.

Have you used Popcorn Time? I would say the interface is very slick and easy to use.

I haven't but at a guess I'd say it's probably because Popcorn Time is a media app which makes it closer to any number of conventional HTML5 websites.

Whereas LightTable is an IDE, but the limitations of windowing and feature layout were showing heavily in it's interface. node-webkit to me, seems like it's good for a particular type of application interface, rather then something very general purpose.

Re: What you should know before starting node-webkit

#13

Post by JohnTHaller »

We used node-webkit with a portable launcher (to contain registry entries and keep settings with the app on Windows) to make 2048 Portable over at PortableApps.com: http://portableapps.com/apps/games/2048-portable

It was a bit of an experiment to see how well it worked... and IF it worked. We compressed some of node-webkit with UPX to shrink it down without compressing all of it and sacrificing performance. It works pretty well though is a bit buggy. We already have a couple web games that are planning to use it to reach a wider audience (since we have a few millions users).

Re: What you should know before starting node-webkit

#14

Post by mkohlmyr »

Igglyboo wrote: post #9
shadowmint wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As smooth and easy to use compared to what? cough lags-and-stops-responsonding-if-you-sneeze-too-hard-on-a-24GB-ram-machine-visual-studio-2013? cough cough spazzes-out-randomly-when-you-type-characters-xcode? cough sublime text? (which to be fair, is pretty amazing) It's all relative. I've used plenty of really shit 'native graphics' applications (especially cross platform ones); on the other hand, plenty of stuff in…

Light Table and Atom both run on node and they're pretty slow/jerky for me. Slow enough where I'd rather use IntelliJ for general purpose editing, intellij has a decent startup time compared to those two but it's way faster after that. Plus I always have it open when I'm working anyway so another tab doesn't really make a difference.

I run LightTable and PyCharm both side by side throughout the day as of a almost a year ago and I definitely feel the opposite. LightTable is much more responsive for me.

Although switching to an SSD made PyCharm a lot faster.

Re: What you should know before starting node-webkit

#16

Post by triptych »

Tloewald wrote: post #11

I've tried migrating a pair of fairly lightweight desktop applications to node-webkit from Realbasic/Xojo (which is essentially a cross-platform Visual Basic, only nicer) with some success (in once case the new application is far faster, while I haven't finished the second, but so far so good). This is the first (simpler) application (really of interest only to Cheetah 3D users). http://loewald.com/c3dbook/Misc-Resou…

Isn't that what Intel's XDK does?

Re: What you should know before starting node-webkit

#17

Post by Tloewald »

triptych wrote: post #16
Tloewald wrote: post #11

I've tried migrating a pair of fairly lightweight desktop applications to node-webkit from Realbasic/Xojo (which is essentially a cross-platform Visual Basic, only nicer) with some success (in once case the new application is far faster, while I haven't finished the second, but so far so good). This is the first (simpler) application (really of interest only to Cheetah 3D users). http://loewald.com/c3dbook/Misc-Resou…

Isn't that what Intel's XDK does?

Oh right, I forgot about that. Maybe it's the "Intel" part :-)

Re: What you should know before starting node-webkit

#18

Post by kethinov »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #13

We used node-webkit with a portable launcher (to contain registry entries and keep settings with the app on Windows) to make 2048 Portable over at PortableApps.com: http://portableapps.com/apps/games/2048-portable It was a bit of an experiment to see how well it worked... and IF it worked. We compressed some of node-webkit with UPX to shrink it down without compressing all of it and sacrificing performance. It works…

Can you elaborate on compressing node-webkit with UPX? I've got a nw app which feels somewhat fat at ~70mb and shaving some of that down would be of interest to me.

Re: What you should know before starting node-webkit

#19

Post by kethinov »

baby wrote: post #5

I've done a bit of node-webkit but I what I really didn't like was the speed at which a node-webkit app launches itself. It's pretty slow.

You can mitigate some of the perceived speed issues by defaulting to show: false in package.json and manually opening your first window after the full runtime environment loads. More info here: https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit/issues/1962#issueco...

Re: What you should know before starting node-webkit

#20

Post by Davertron »

I've built a few apps using node-webkit for myself and, being a web developer, found it pretty awesome. One of the challenges that I think atom-shell handles better is background tasks/jobs. In node-webkit, my understanding is if you want to be able to background tasks using a node worker (not a webworker), then you have to bundle another node runtime with your app and use node's execute/spawn. This works OK, but bundling another version of node is kind of a pain. atom-shell works this way out of the box which is awesome if you need it.

Both projects are great ways of developing apps using web technologies though.

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