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Electron 3.0.0

electronjs.org

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Re: Electron 3.0.0

#61

Post by danShumway »

rudedogg wrote: post #49
benbristow wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it makes for easier programming, yes. Writing Slack as a native app would be a massive pain. Especially due to all the web-like features it has, the fact that it's one codebase (mainly) for desktop and web. They also have to support Windows, Linux, Mac and mobile. Not an easy task

> Writing Slack as a native app would be a massive pain. If it was allowed I'd write the native macOS app for them. I'm sure it'd pay off selling it for $5 or $10 in the Mac App Store

Do it then: https://api.slack.com/

Slack APIs aren't perfect, but they're good enough to allow 3rd party clients for terminals, Emacs[0], and the like. I've never dug into it because I avoid Slack in general, but I think the biggest hurdle right now is just user authentication.

That's a pain, and does limit your audience, but maybe you'd still find some buyers on HN.

[0]: https://github.com/yuya373/emacs-slack

Re: Electron 3.0.0

#62

Post by roryisok »

pier25 wrote: post #57
pvg wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still about twice the work. Or n-times, for n platforms.

It depends. You could still use a web UI but without embedding Chrome and Node.

You'd need node for file system access though. Unless you write your own io layer

Re: Electron 3.0.0

#63

Post by scarface74 »

mikhailt wrote: post #36
Razengan wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is writing native apps honestly still so hard these days? I can appreciate the concerns about maintaining multiple codebases and dealing with different delivery mechanisms and their rules, but modern iOS/macOS and Windows APIs (at least; I cannot speak for Android and Linux) seem just as easy, let you work in arguably better languages, evolve at a faster rate, and provide a better experience for users and their machi…

It's not writing the native code that's the problem, it's designing the same GUI experience across platforms that's nearly impossible to do. If it was so easy as you said, a lot of macOS apps would've been portable to Windows years ago given the market share. I work for a cross-platform company, Windows is a much more difficult to develop for compared to macOS. You can write a Cocoa UI but what do you do on Windows w…

It's not writing the native code that's the problem, it's designing the same GUI experience across platforms that's nearly impossible to do.

I don’t want the same “GUI experience” across platforms, I want a GUI experience that is consistent with the platform I am running.

When I was a heavy Mac user, I hated iTunes on Windows because it felt like being on a Mac instead of Windows.

Re: Electron 3.0.0

#64

Post by kjeetgill »

chris_mc wrote: post #56
CyberDildonics wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Equating electron and cross platform is a gigantic fallacy. Qt and other GUI frameworks (like Juce and FLTK) exist and are blisteringly fast. You don't have to package an entire web browser to make something cross platform.

Qt, or whatever, isn't pretty enough for the designers.

I'm more familiar with GTK, but can't you still make it look like anything you want pixel perfect?

I think the real issue is you can't bring all of your javascript/html/css libraries and tooling over.

Re: Electron 3.0.0

#65

Post by NathanCH »

scarface74 wrote: post #63
mikhailt wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not writing the native code that's the problem, it's designing the same GUI experience across platforms that's nearly impossible to do. If it was so easy as you said, a lot of macOS apps would've been portable to Windows years ago given the market share. I work for a cross-platform company, Windows is a much more difficult to develop for compared to macOS. You can write a Cocoa UI but what do you do on Windows w…

It's not writing the native code that's the problem, it's designing the same GUI experience across platforms that's nearly impossible to do. I don’t want the same “GUI experience” across platforms, I want a GUI experience that is consistent with the platform I am running. When I was a heavy Mac user, I hated iTunes on Windows because it felt like being on a Mac instead of Windows.

With so many platforms that's unrealistically expensive. It's not just Windows and OS X anymore.

Re: Electron 3.0.0

#66

Post by MBCook »

LeoNatan25 wrote: post #53
MBCook wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who doesn’t follow Electron even that is worthless to me. Is there a significant speed/memory usage change? Is the install smaller? Some new features that people want? I don’t know. And I’m not going to read the names of dozens of tickets to try to find out.

> Is there a significant speed/memory usage change? Is the install smaller? Some new features that people want? No, it still packages two different runtime environments, one of which is a browser, which, in turn, is basically an OS.

I know it’s not going to be native speed. Every. But I thought maybe it was 10% faster or something due to an updated JS engine.

(Just a guess at a possible feature, not meant to be true)

Re: Electron 3.0.0

#68

Post by flukus »

true_religion wrote: post #24
LeoNatan25 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a billion dollar company? Give me a break.

Slacks annual revenue was 200 million in 2017, when they were a 5 billion dollar valued company. 200 mil is just 1000 Bay Area salaries, and they do have other budget items. Its entirely possible that they cannot fund 5 native development teams, while building their core features to justify their valuation, and paying their sales and marketting team to actually generate revenue.

5 Devs on each team, which should be more than enough if they're getting 200k a year would cost a total of 5 mil. A tiny amount for such a huge improvement for users.

Re: Electron 3.0.0

#69

Post by kitsunesoba »

NathanCH wrote: post #65
scarface74 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not writing the native code that's the problem, it's designing the same GUI experience across platforms that's nearly impossible to do. I don’t want the same “GUI experience” across platforms, I want a GUI experience that is consistent with the platform I am running. When I was a heavy Mac user, I hated iTunes on Windows because it felt like being on a Mac instead of Windows.

With so many platforms that's unrealistically expensive. It's not just Windows and OS X anymore.

Is having 1-3 Mac guys and 1-3 Windows guys (which is realistically all the vast majority of apps would need) really that much more expensive? To me it seems the real attraction is being able to hire from a giant pool of cheap, generic, interchangeable, fully replaceable developers.

Re: Electron 3.0.0

#70

Post by kitsunesoba »

chris_mc wrote: post #56
CyberDildonics wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Equating electron and cross platform is a gigantic fallacy. Qt and other GUI frameworks (like Juce and FLTK) exist and are blisteringly fast. You don't have to package an entire web browser to make something cross platform.

Qt, or whatever, isn't pretty enough for the designers.

This is a total non issue with Qt Quick, but I think complete UI look control is a waste of time and effort. It’s wheel reinvention where light brand accents would suffice.
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