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Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

josephg.com

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Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#81

Post by yladiz »

Andrex wrote: post #47

> I just ... don't care about your app enough to justify running more chrome instances Is the author going to uninstall Slack, Atom, Chrome, and Spotify, then? Electron has won out because key apps have opted to use it and decided that the trade-offs of user CPU and battery are worth some amount less than their productivity as developers. Yes, there are alternatives to developing native desktop apps in JavaScript (I'…

I don't think that apps necessarily chose it because of the reasons you mentioned. It is most definitely due to productivity, but there are ways to mitigate the CPU and battery usage -- I often have Spotify open on my Mac and it really doesn't use much CPU (often less than either Safari or Docker), and it doesn't suffer from poor performance most of the time. I would say that while Electron apps, as a whole, are generally worse than a native app, there are ways around the issues that plague some of them that depend on the developer(s). For example, VSCode and Spotify having pretty good performance and not hogging CPU, while Slack and Atom the opposite.

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#82

Post by JustSomeNobody »

paraboul wrote: post #71
Etheryte wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both your webpage and your docs are riddled with typos and the like. While it isn't indicative of code or project quality, it sure makes taking the project seriously a lot harder.

Hey, We're French and it's indeed hard for us to get this perfectly right and focusing on the project itself at the same time. We're planning to move this to github in order to let the community help us on this.

Just because I'm curious, why would you not use your native language for the content on your page?

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#83

Post by true_religion »

Mithaldu wrote: post #57
evmar wrote: post #35

I've been working on a hobby app for some years that is a modern refresh of an old idea. As the article exhorts (and just for funsies, it's just a hobby) I'm writing it using native code and to be conservative on resources. Every place I need to render text or make a thing respond to a mouse click I need to manually do all my own text layout and event handling and so on. (The app is in a domain where it needs special…

Well, the question is: Does your app run always like a daemon or just when you actually need it? It can be fine to prototype in Electron, or to make tools in it. But if you're making a chat program or anything similarly long-lived, it's the worst decision you can make for your user.

Vs code is in electron and fairly long lived.

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#84

Post by ajmurmann »

paraboul wrote: post #14

FWIW, we're working on https://github.com/nidium/Nidium presicely to fix this. A new kind of browser engine, not based on any existing engine, allowing developers to use a subset of the web (webgl, 2d, layout) without being forced to use a bloated ecosystem (and which also works on mobile and low end device). Previous HN discussion : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6314961

I can't find on the page if Nidium supports WebRTC. Are you currently supporting it or are planning too?

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#85

Post by blueprint »

Gonzih wrote: post #61

Telegram Desktop is very good example of modern desktop client done in the most efficient way. C++ and qt, nothing else. Works like a charm an all major operating systems. Easy to install, use and update. Great stuff.

How do they manage to get the very native feel to the UI on Telegram for MacOS? Or is that a different native client?

Also curious… in what language and UI framework is their iOS client written?

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#86

Post by blueprint »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #82
paraboul wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, We're French and it's indeed hard for us to get this perfectly right and focusing on the project itself at the same time. We're planning to move this to github in order to let the community help us on this.

Just because I'm curious, why would you not use your native language for the content on your page?

Seems an easy question. English is basically a/the global language. If you want a massive portion of the community to find the content inaccessible, making it available only in French is a good way to do so.

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#87

Post by franciscop »

Etheryte wrote: post #64
paraboul wrote: post #14

FWIW, we're working on https://github.com/nidium/Nidium presicely to fix this. A new kind of browser engine, not based on any existing engine, allowing developers to use a subset of the web (webgl, 2d, layout) without being forced to use a bloated ecosystem (and which also works on mobile and low end device). Previous HN discussion : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6314961

Both your webpage and your docs are riddled with typos and the like. While it isn't indicative of code or project quality, it sure makes taking the project seriously a lot harder.

Well it depends on how much you have worked with a person who was still learning English. For me it highly depends on the kind of typos:

- They're vs Their and similar normally denote uneducated native English speaker. The code might still be okay, but these typos passing to production makes me check code quality in case some similar QA mistakes are passed in the code.

- Grammar mistakes normally show a foreigner for whom English is not the main language. A small example just in the first line, "to create apps, games that run" => "to create apps and games that run", but this is normally due to a different language constructions. Similar to graphical softwares => graphical software.

So, kudos for OP to write the documentation in a non-native language! (upon light investigation it seems the main writer is French and his coworkers fix typos from time to time).

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#89

Post by paraboul »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #82
paraboul wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, We're French and it's indeed hard for us to get this perfectly right and focusing on the project itself at the same time. We're planning to move this to github in order to let the community help us on this.

Just because I'm curious, why would you not use your native language for the content on your page?

nidium is an open source tech project not a local product.

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#90

Post by GrinningFool »

feelandcoffee wrote: post #44

I get the idea of Electron Apps having some hate for the performance. I mean if I have to open a large SQL file (> 250MB) and compare the performance between Atom and Sublime... well the difference will be day and night. But there are a few differences between Flash and Electron that are not small. I mean the first thing is, Electron is open source in a open Standard, and have a fast development cycles to fix perform…

> but I think Electron will be a interesting option to make desktop Apps something again

For most of the computing world, desktop apps have never stopped being a thing.

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