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Why we maintain desktop apps for OS X, Windows, and a web application

medium.com

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Re: Why we maintain desktop apps for OS X, Windows, and a web application

#61

Post by titanix2 »

incompatible wrote: post #48

"Once they find their place in the Windows Start menu or the Mac OS Dock, they are always visible." I don't think this is true anymore in Windows 8+. From my limited experience in using it, once you install something it disappears into a mass of icons and is never seen again. If you can remember the name you may be able to search for it.

Sadly the search is also broken. Not only it often opens too slow so the first letters of the search are not taked in account (the start menu was blazing fast in comparison) but to add insult to injury even Windows builtin programs aren't always displayed in the result search (eg. Powershell ISE). So if you don't know the program exists and don't know its the path, good luck finding it.

Re: Why we maintain desktop apps for OS X, Windows, and a web application

#62

Post by tdkl »

tracker1 wrote: post #58
vbezhenar wrote: post #26

What I don't like is WebView distributed as a "native app". It's not native app and it's not something I want to install, don't cheat me. Webpages should stay in browser. I expect native app to be written with Objective C (OS X/iOS user here), having very low memory usage, fast startup and offline usage. Also I expect as much integration with the system, as possible, native controls (not that buggy emulation without…

In chrome I can create application shortcuts... and with browser notifications it pretty much just works. I usually have pandora and slack as application shortcuts that run in their own windows... it really doesn't bug me that they run in a browser... they work as I expect them to (though not in osx iirc). I agree that the thin wrappers are a little annoying... On the flip side, though I really appreciate that I can…

If user X uses Chrome. If not, there's extra 1GB+ bloat for one "browser app". No thanks.

Re: Why we maintain desktop apps for OS X, Windows, and a web application

#63

Post by m_fayer »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #17

I love it when companies make software that I use on my mobile phone and it syncs with a desktop application as well. As a web developer I appreciate web applications but the experience is almost always better in a native application (at least I've found very few exceptions). So I'm happy companies like this still provide desktop applications. It would be great if it were more of a trend but I'm not sure that it is y…

I'm pretty happy with the approach of common x-plat core and then bindings to the native UI framework (Cocoa, WPF, etc.) on each platform. I'll bite the bullet of rewriting the UI layer for each platform if it means an absolutely great experience, you still save plenty from having that common core. Also, there's the nice side-effect that you end up learning the particulars of each platform, and by necessity end up with a really good architecture.

I do this with C#, not sure how many other languages support this approach. I wish it was all of them.

Re: Why we maintain desktop apps for OS X, Windows, and a web application

#64

Post by rhaps0dy »

A nice insight at the end of the article that I'd never realized (it might be obvious to you).

>as long as you browse the web, you keep coming back to google.com to navigate efficiently. This is why Google wants you to spend time in a browser. This is why they offer Gmail for free, Chrome for free, Chromebooks at a loss, or why they fund their own competition!

Re: Why we maintain desktop apps for OS X, Windows, and a web application

#65

Post by prof_hobart »

gberger wrote: post #10
saurik wrote: post #8

> At Front for example, people using the desktop app spend on average 34% more time on the app that those using the web version. ...maybe I'm crazy, but the primary metric I would evaluate a tool designed to increase business productivity is not how much time I spend using it, and in fact would normally be summarized as the exact opposite of this metric...

Also, correlation/causation. It could be that the people who download the desktop app are already the heavy users.

In this case, I'm not sure that's an important distinction.

Whether it's the desktop app driving increased usage or it's heavy users preferring the desktop app, it suggests that one way or another, the desktop app is better for heavy usage.

Re: Why we maintain desktop apps for OS X, Windows, and a web application

#67

Post by BillinghamJ »

avinassh wrote: post #66

Considering the performance of Atom, is it a good idea to build desktop apps with Node.js?

Atom's performance problems are not because of Node, they're because they render with HTML, loading your whole text documents into the DOM as hundreds of thousands of separate elements.

Using Node JS as the backend to a proper native rendering system would work fine, and in fact if the application was written to properly handle everything asynchronously, it may well be faster than an app written entirely in the native language of the system.

Re: Why we maintain desktop apps for OS X, Windows, and a web application

#68

Post by ramkalari »

alagappanr wrote: post #53

This approach is probably in complete contrast to what Flipkart/Myntra have been doing in India. Both are widely used e-commerce websites that are going complete mobile-app only by killing even their desktop and mobile websites. Two moves in completely different directions. Would be interesting to see the results down the line.

Flipkart's customer base is completely different. A large percentage of their customers will probably never own a desktop let alone access their application on one. Front is an app targeted for business where the users still use desktops where it may make sense to have a desktop app.

Re: Why we maintain desktop apps for OS X, Windows, and a web application

#69

Post by tracker1 »

tdkl wrote: post #62
tracker1 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In chrome I can create application shortcuts... and with browser notifications it pretty much just works. I usually have pandora and slack as application shortcuts that run in their own windows... it really doesn't bug me that they run in a browser... they work as I expect them to (though not in osx iirc). I agree that the thin wrappers are a little annoying... On the flip side, though I really appreciate that I can…

If user X uses Chrome. If not, there's extra 1GB+ bloat for one "browser app". No thanks.

So, you don't use any browser apps?

That must be pretty hard to do. I think going without a browser+javascript would be pretty primative... I mean, I pay my bills, send emails, hell view the site I'm on as browser applications. I remember being online in 1993 (vga, bbsing, dialup ftw), it wasn't nearly as diverse or capable as today.

Re: Why we maintain desktop apps for OS X, Windows, and a web application

#70

Post by Tiksi »

tracker1 wrote: post #69
tdkl wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If user X uses Chrome. If not, there's extra 1GB+ bloat for one "browser app". No thanks.

So, you don't use any browser apps? That must be pretty hard to do. I think going without a browser+javascript would be pretty primative... I mean, I pay my bills, send emails, hell view the site I'm on as browser applications. I remember being online in 1993 (vga, bbsing, dialup ftw), it wasn't nearly as diverse or capable as today.

> So, you don't use any browser apps?

That's not at all what they said. Some of us use browsers that are not chrome. That would mean having to run 2 browser runtimes to get a thin wrapper with chrome.

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