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I don't get this. Why does the language it's written in make it "not native"? Firefox is pretty "native", yet practically all of the UI is powered by JS. Hell

I don't get this. Why does the language it's written in make it "not native"? Firefox is pretty "native", yet practically all of the UI is powered by JS. Hell some of the built in programs in windows 10 are using html/js/css and if you are going to argue that the built-in "part of the OS" programs aren't native, then what is? If you can see performance issues or problems with how it works then point those out, don't just blanket knock an entire application because you don't like the languages it uses.

STRML 11y ago
Well, that's just the issue. I have no problem with Electron apps as an idea, but they're often coupled with extremely slow rendering. You can tell immediately. For instance, in Slack, which is more or less an Electron app / browser in a box, I can easily get it down to <5 fps just by posting a snippet or going too far in scrollback. Resizing the window is beyond painful, etc., etc. It all seems unbelievably unnecessary - why should a chat program, literally text on a screen, perform like this on a top-of-the-line quad-core i7 system?
- Klathmon 11y ago
  Having a problem with the performance is perfect criticism, but the commenter i was replying to was bashing it because of it's choice, not because of it's performance. He won't even try it before saying that. web rendering doesn't automatically make an app slow. And in my experience choosing a "common" platform like the web allows an app to run everywhere. I'm not suddenly going to be able to triple my development speed, so without the common platform that means that i'd only be able to support one major platform, or all platforms but with a small fraction of the development speed, and most likely many more bugs. And to be fair, saying slack is nothing more than "text on a screen" is really oversimplifying it. There are tons of formatting options, code highlighting, embedded HTML, embedded video and images, attachments, coloring, emojis, and more. It seems like a pretty obvious choice to go with a web rendering engine seeing as it supports almost all of that "natively".
  - stephenr 11y ago
    Performance, usability, conformance to platform standards, you name it, packaged web views are terrible for it.
stephenr 11y ago
Electron apps package a web view and show it on a desktop. They're explicitly using a browser window without the browser chrome. Firefox honestly is a terrible choice to defend non-native UI conventions. You might as well have picked Java apps as your argument.

STRML 11y ago

Well, that's just the issue. I have no problem with Electron apps as an idea, but they're often coupled with extremely slow rendering. You can tell immediately. For instance, in Slack, which is more or less an Electron app / browser in a box, I can easily get it down to <5 fps just by posting a snippet or going too far in scrollback. Resizing the window is beyond painful, etc., etc. It all seems unbelievably unnecessary - why should a chat program, literally text on a screen, perform like this on a top-of-the-line quad-core i7 system?

Klathmon 11y ago
Having a problem with the performance is perfect criticism, but the commenter i was replying to was bashing it because of it's choice, not because of it's performance. He won't even try it before saying that. web rendering doesn't automatically make an app slow. And in my experience choosing a "common" platform like the web allows an app to run everywhere. I'm not suddenly going to be able to triple my development speed, so without the common platform that means that i'd only be able to support one major platform, or all platforms but with a small fraction of the development speed, and most likely many more bugs. And to be fair, saying slack is nothing more than "text on a screen" is really oversimplifying it. There are tons of formatting options, code highlighting, embedded HTML, embedded video and images, attachments, coloring, emojis, and more. It seems like a pretty obvious choice to go with a web rendering engine seeing as it supports almost all of that "natively".
- stephenr 11y ago
  Performance, usability, conformance to platform standards, you name it, packaged web views are terrible for it.

stephenr 11y ago

Electron apps package a web view and show it on a desktop. They're explicitly using a browser window without the browser chrome. Firefox honestly is a terrible choice to defend non-native UI conventions. You might as well have picked Java apps as your argument.