15 ms·

Show HN: Nativefier – Wrap any web page natively

162 points by skewedlines 11y ago

Fudgel 11y ago
Does it support flash yet?
- bjacobel 11y ago
  "Yet"? We should be moving away from Flash, not towards it.
- blokhasie 11y ago
  No but it does seem possible to add it by hacking the Electron files post-creation. https://github.com/atom/electron/blob/master/docs/tutorial/using-pepper-flash-plugin.md https://github.com/atom/electron/blob/master/docs/tutorial/u... Haven't tried it but I have some sites that use flash (mostly music streaming) that aren't playing well with Electron-based apps.
- slazaro 11y ago
  I tried using this with play.spotify.com (for linux) and had the same problem, it needs flash to work...
nik736 11y ago
That's really nice actually. I couldn't try it out but if it works I think it's really cool. I just don't know what to think about my Apps being more and more simply websites instead of Native.
c17r 11y ago
There's also Fluid (http://fluidapp.com http://fluidapp.com) of which I've been a happy user for years.
- bigethan 11y ago
  I'm a big fan of fluid as well. But it's always annoyed me because it's a older version of safari. Electron uses Chrome!
  - mwcampbell 11y ago
    How can Fluid be using an old version of Safari? Does it bundle its own build of WebKit? Or are all Mac apps that use the public WebKit framework using an older version of WebKit than Safari itself?
- tmikaeld 11y ago
  I was a user of it, but it's closed source and Electron uses Chrome and is heavily maintained.
- micheljansen 11y ago
  I'm also using Fluid, and I even purchased a license for it, but it seems like it's no longer being maintained, to the point where sites refuse to work with it due to the outdated User Agent Identifier (which you can change, but still...).
- jamessb 11y ago
  Fluid refuses to create a wrapper for a site using a self-signed SSL certificate (or at least, it did the last time I tried it). This was annoying, because I wanted to use it with an app I was self-hosting, and it wasn't worth the effort of getting an SSL certifiate it would accept.
nixy 11y ago
I just tried it, skeptical that it would be that easy. Well, one command to install and one to build. Worked exactly as I advertised. Nice!
anc84 11y ago
What does native even mean here? It is just making a standalone browser that will only talk to the website and whatever resources it references or somehow make it all work locally, natively?
- skewedlines 11y ago
  Yeap, it's just an easy way to create a browser that only talks to one website in a separate and isolated environment from your default browser.
dieg0 11y ago
Looks great, thanks for this. Wonder if the executable file will work in other systems. For example if I create an app for google.com and move that app to another system, will it work? given that is the same OS.
- skewedlines 11y ago
  Yeap, you can specify different build options such as OS (osx, windows, linux) and processor architecture and pass it to a friend, but the main idea is that it simplifies the process for you and automatically detects your current platform.
lucaspiller 11y ago
Google Maps, like most web apps, incorrectly determines my language based on IP address. I can't find a way to change it from the UI, but you can force it to English with this: nativefier "http://maps.google.com/?hl=en"
- vidarh 11y ago
  If you use Chrome, and are not logged in to a Google account, Google Maps respects the Chrome language setting (just tested). Go to settings, "Show advanced settings" at the bottom and search for "Languages". If you are logged in to a Google account, the language settings on your Google account takes preference.
  - lucaspiller 11y ago
    That isn't the case for me. I have my OS and Chrome set to English [0], but when, in Incognito mode, I go to http://maps.google.com/ http://maps.google.com/ it redirects me to https://www.google.it/maps/ https://www.google.it/maps/ and displays everything in Italian (I'm in Italy at the moment). [0] http://headers.cloxy.net/request.php http://headers.cloxy.net/request.php says my browser is sending "Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8"
mxuribe 11y ago
I had originally mis-read this: I read it as a super-simple wrapper that converts web pages/apps into a native mobile app. But it seems it actually creates a desktop application. I understand the use-case: avoiding bouncing between web browser tabs, but I guess I don't see that as annoying enough. I'm sure there are other use-cases that I'm not thinking of.
- Kiro 11y ago
  > I read it as a super-simple wrapper that converts web pages/apps into a native mobile app. I would love that. Just one command and you're done.
  - czechdeveloper 11y ago
    I'm sure I've seen something like that. But I can't remember the name. Maybe someone else?
    - ParadoxOryx 11y ago
      I've seen this on HN before - https://github.com/mess110/glassic https://github.com/mess110/glassic
  - mattlutze 11y ago
    Performance and experience is so much better from an actual native app, though. This trend toward building a parred-down version of a browser into link-rich apps is actually really troublesome, from both the broken user experience (different buttons for different common tasks, back and return functions not working consistently) and from a security standpoint.
  - T-A 11y ago
    http://www.manifoldjs.com/ http://www.manifoldjs.com/ "manifoldJS helps you reach more users than ever by packaging your web experience as native apps across Android, iOS, and Windows."
- curt15 11y ago
Gys 11y ago
So instead of having one browser with ten tabs you can create ten different 'browser apps'. Ok....
- mosburger 11y ago
  I use Fluid (http://fluidapp.com http://fluidapp.com) for a similar purpose as Nativfier... it's because my brain is hard-wired from years of use to equate Cmd-Tab (or Alt-Tab) with "task switch." My brain thinks of e-mail as a separate thing from my work (editor and browser), and I personally don't like conflating my browser with different tasks like e-mail. I know I could just learn Ctrl-Tab or Alt-{ or whatever to cycle through dozens of tabs, but Cmd-Tab works for me. Different strokes for different folks. I'll probably check Nativfier out because Fluid hasn't been updated significantly in a while and uses an old renderer, and it's a bit laggy w/ HuBoard (the front-end to GitHub issues that we use at work - it's pretty JS-intensive)
- djacobs 11y ago
  IMO for web apps that you have open all the time (maybe Asana, Google Docs), native OS navigation and window management is significantly better than tab navigation. Of course it doesn't have as much of a benefit if you do it for every tab you have open.
_droptable_ 11y ago
Honest question: Are Chrome apps "File->Create Application Shortcuts" not available on Mac OS X? Because on Linux you can create such apps very easily with this Chrome feature, and I'm pretty sure even cookies/history is separate from the main Chrome instance. Or is this better/different in some way?
- websirnik 11y ago
  Not available on Mac OS X
  - est 11y ago
    make it available: chrome --app=http://google.com http://google.com
  - tmikaeld 11y ago
    And has been for years, there isn't any signs of it becoming available either..
ehosca 11y ago
i'm probably missing something here but how about just saving a bookmark on the desktop?
- jstx 11y ago
  You are missing that saving a bookmark to the desktop does not provide a different instance of the browser when spinning up. It will just open a tab in the first browser it finds. Which is horrible if you consider something to be a core piece of software and you are unable to effectively cmd-tab to it. This is more of an OSX issue than windows, since windows will happily alt-tab amongst browser windows. OSX uses a less intuitive cmd-` for tabbing through program instances and still requires that the webapp is running in it's own window, in the same OSX window "Space", it cannot be minimized, and which will crash with the browser itself, irrespective of which tab is truly responsible [taking all your current state data with it]. I'm all for webapps supplanting native apps. But even presenting them as such requires something like Electron, and is completely counter to the trend of managing all tabs [webapps] as crony components of a master "WebBrowser" process.
andersonmvd 11y ago
I liked it. Reading Medium posts on your app was better than in a chrome browser. Congratulations. Side note: on Ubuntu there is no icon when I open the app. If it could get the favicon would be great, as well as the back button rather than pressing backspace.
- skewedlines 11y ago
  Actually, I originally intended this mainly to wrap single page web apps that tend to avoid using the back button and instead providing their own navigational controls on the page itself, so I did not include them in the UI. However, if desired, these basic navigational controls (back, forward, reload etc.) can be found in the application menu. Thanks for the feedback about the icon issue, I'll take note of that!
jbi 11y ago
This could be great for office users who are mostly using desktop applications. Acceptance for web apps is sometimes still hard to get. However, I haven't seen anything electron-based with proxy support. Any ideas on that?
monkmartinez 11y ago
This project and the projects I see linked in the comments thus far (MacPin, WebShell) are AWESOME. I really wish Python had a better story here, but I digress. Also, these types of projects are puzzling at the same time. I have been under the impression (right or wrong), that people didn't like/want/need desktop apps. With these types of projects I wonder if people don't know that they want desktop apps...
- mwcampbell 11y ago
  > I really wish Python had a better story here, but I digress. I know it's a digression, but I'm curious. What do you not like about packaging of Python apps on desktop platforms?
  - monkmartinez 11y ago
    That they are not portable to the web and vice-versa in Python, first. Second, I can not do justice... so I will give you a great blog post that sums my thoughts nicely: https://glyph.twistedmatrix.com/2015/09/software-you-can-use.html https://glyph.twistedmatrix.com/2015/09/software-you-can-use...
woodruffw 11y ago
I'm not convinced that this process qualifies as making a web page "native". After all, this just seems to spawn a new browser instance with some UI stripped away. None of the normal qualities of native applications (native performance, hardware access, exposure to system interfaces/toolkits) apply.
- ashark 11y ago
  I'd say if your GUI layer is based on the HTML DOM then you're certainly not "native", for any useful definition of "native". Except maybe on ChromeOS, I suppose.
willmacdonald 11y ago
Are cookies shared between different apps ? One of the nice features of Fluid Pro was keeping cookies segregated.
- skewedlines 11y ago
  Cookies are isolated to the app it is built for, and right now the application name is the unique identifier for the app. You're right in that the application data should be segregated, and I'll look into a more robust method of uniquely identifying each app that is built.
mikewhy 11y ago
I tried doing the same thing using Electron. CPU usage isn't ideal, context menus wouldn't work, keyboard focus was an issue. Eventually I dropped it and have been using MacPin[1] for a while. There is also WebShell[2] [1]: https://github.com/kfix/MacPin https://github.com/kfix/MacPin [2]: https://github.com/djyde/WebShell https://github.com/djyde/WebShell
- vmateixeira 11y ago
  I believe this uses Electron under the hood.
  - mikewhy 11y ago
    It does, therefore: - CPU usage is much higher than something using WKWebView - OS Back/Forward shortcuts don't work - No context menus - CMD+Click opens in your regular browser Which makes it a no-go for me, but YMMV.
mwcampbell 11y ago
This trend of a hundred desktop applications all bundling their own copy of Chromium really bothers me. I know the situation sucks on Windows, but on Mac, why not use the system WebKit framework? I know the decision was made upstream of this project, in Electron, but this project will increase the proliferation of app-private copies of Chromium. For the past year or so, when thinking about software bloat, I always come back to this sad bit of dialog from the novel _Off to Be the Wizard_: Phillip (time traveler from 1984): What on earth can a person do with 4 gigabytes of RAM? Martin (from 2012): Upgrade it immediately. Do we really want to make that situation even worse?
- koko775 11y ago
  > why not use the system WebKit framework? Same reason people often like to statically link. The system is guaranteed to be a moving target sooner or later, so new bugs may appear or disappear depending on a user-controlled action that's tedious to track if it's possible at all. Bundled code, on the other hand, is a fixed, known quality against which bugs can be tested, or source inspected, or otherwise debugged in a way system libraries typically cannot.
- skewedlines 11y ago
  I do agree with you on that, and there should be some form of Chromium that can be shared across applications to reduce the bloat of such packaged apps. Perhaps this is an issue with the architecture of Electron itself, which requires all such apps to contain their own version of Chromium? I wanted easy cross platform compatibility with minimal code, and Electron seemed like a good choice across for apps across Windows, OSX and Linux.
  - mwcampbell 11y ago
    On OS X, a little Cocoa application in Objective-C using the system WebKit framework would probably do the trick. On Linux, a little GTK application in C using WebKitGTK would probably work. On Windows... I don't know. I know from firsthand that embedding the IE engine via the WebBrowser ActiveX control really sucks. I'm going to see if the WebKit WinCairo port is any good these days. If we must use CHromium, then the Chromium Embedded Framework is worth a look. It's a DLL, so in principle, it can be shared between applications. You'd still need some platform-specific code to create the window containing CEF, though.
rcthompson 11y ago
Hey, cool, it opens external links in my default browser. That's all I've ever wanted in a web-page-to-app tool. It's surprising no one has gotten this right before. Both Mozilla's Prism and Chrome's webbapp-izer functionality get this wrong. Edit: It doesn't support HTTP authentication, though. Any page that is supposed to present an HTTP auth dialog just goes straight to a 401. This means I can't wrap my personal Transmission/Syncthing servers using nativefier. Edit 2: Looks like this will be fixed soon[1]. [1] https://github.com/jiahaog/nativefier/issues/19 https://github.com/jiahaog/nativefier/issues/19
antoniuschan99 11y ago
I like this, but wish it would automatically convert to the correct icon (it's defaulting to the electron icon). I see that there are commands in the docs to do this, will try it in a bit :). Thanks! Just tried using this for Hacker News and noticed I can't go back :(.
- skewedlines 11y ago
  Yeah, that was one of the main concerns I had when I was developing this, it would be lovely if the app itself could automatically source and add them in automatically. It's really a hassle to manually add teh images, but I'm not really familiar with how to convert them into the appropriate format in Node.js in a quick and easy way. Will look into this in a future update!
katabasis 11y ago
This is amazing. I work in digital publishing at an art museum, and we are creating digital books as static HTML/CSS/JS files which rely on client-side interactivity for most features. Some people have asked about getting a desktop version of these books which they could download locally (scholars doing fieldwork, etc). I knew something like this was possible using Electron, but I figured I'd have to build it from scratch if I wanted it. Instead I just pointed this script at the beta version of our latest project[1] and the project built flawlessly in under a minute. Nice work! I know that the web as a platform has its problems, but it is the only truly universal runtime we have right now, and tools like this help realize this potential more fully. One question: is there a way to package pre-built copies as .dmg or .exe files so that non-technical users can download an app that is ready to go, without having to run the build script themselves? [1]: http://gettypubs.github.io/Terracottas/ http://gettypubs.github.io/Terracottas/
- skewedlines 11y ago
  I'm glad you like it! I think such an installer feature could be added in by integrating with https://github.com/loopline-systems/electron-builder https://github.com/loopline-systems/electron-builder, I'll see if I have time in the next few days to add this in before school starts.
- icebraining 11y ago
  This doesn't seem to create offline copies of the webapps, at least assuming by the examples given (maps.google.com and medium.com), which would be quite useless as static apps.
joeyspn 11y ago
Really useful! I actually started to build a similar utility as a side project with NW.js, but I never finished it because of lack of time... You should also add the ability to add chromium flags... https://discuss.atom.io/t/how-to-access-chrome-flags-in-electron/16470 https://discuss.atom.io/t/how-to-access-chrome-flags-in-elec...
sanj 11y ago
Very cool -- I wrapped my first app and it worked great. Sadly, when I gave to copy to a less technical coworker (ie, without node.js installed) and it open with a blank window. Is that expected?
kazinator 11y ago
Say what? What am I missing by having a simple web link on a desktop to any frequently accessed web page I want? Launch it, and there I am, in Google Maps or whatever. Does this natifier actually suck down some of the JavaScript so that it is locally hosted? If so, is there some check if the upstream software has changed and needs to be re-natified?
siquick 11y ago
Excellent work - well done
erlend_sh 11y ago
So cool! Any chance it could work as a web app? The install process seems fairly simply, but it's still command line. Could be a really good adoption trick if you make a web app that: 1. Lets me enter the basic info for a site I'd like to appify, e.g. app.moqups.com 2a. If successful, great, here's a download for your app (and the app is added to your list of supported web apps). 2b. Not successful: We urge to to send an email to the app creators so they can troubleshoot this issue together with us.
zubairq 11y ago
Absolutely incredible!

162 points by skewedlines 11y ago

Fudgel 11y ago

Does it support flash yet?

bjacobel 11y ago
"Yet"? We should be moving away from Flash, not towards it.
blokhasie 11y ago
No but it does seem possible to add it by hacking the Electron files post-creation. https://github.com/atom/electron/blob/master/docs/tutorial/using-pepper-flash-plugin.md https://github.com/atom/electron/blob/master/docs/tutorial/u... Haven't tried it but I have some sites that use flash (mostly music streaming) that aren't playing well with Electron-based apps.
slazaro 11y ago
I tried using this with play.spotify.com (for linux) and had the same problem, it needs flash to work...

nik736 11y ago

That's really nice actually. I couldn't try it out but if it works I think it's really cool. I just don't know what to think about my Apps being more and more simply websites instead of Native.

c17r 11y ago

There's also Fluid (http://fluidapp.com http://fluidapp.com) of which I've been a happy user for years.

bigethan 11y ago
I'm a big fan of fluid as well. But it's always annoyed me because it's a older version of safari. Electron uses Chrome!
- mwcampbell 11y ago
  How can Fluid be using an old version of Safari? Does it bundle its own build of WebKit? Or are all Mac apps that use the public WebKit framework using an older version of WebKit than Safari itself?
tmikaeld 11y ago
I was a user of it, but it's closed source and Electron uses Chrome and is heavily maintained.
micheljansen 11y ago
I'm also using Fluid, and I even purchased a license for it, but it seems like it's no longer being maintained, to the point where sites refuse to work with it due to the outdated User Agent Identifier (which you can change, but still...).
jamessb 11y ago
Fluid refuses to create a wrapper for a site using a self-signed SSL certificate (or at least, it did the last time I tried it). This was annoying, because I wanted to use it with an app I was self-hosting, and it wasn't worth the effort of getting an SSL certifiate it would accept.

nixy 11y ago

I just tried it, skeptical that it would be that easy. Well, one command to install and one to build. Worked exactly as I advertised. Nice!

anc84 11y ago

What does native even mean here? It is just making a standalone browser that will only talk to the website and whatever resources it references or somehow make it all work locally, natively?

skewedlines 11y ago
Yeap, it's just an easy way to create a browser that only talks to one website in a separate and isolated environment from your default browser.

dieg0 11y ago

Looks great, thanks for this. Wonder if the executable file will work in other systems. For example if I create an app for google.com and move that app to another system, will it work? given that is the same OS.

skewedlines 11y ago
Yeap, you can specify different build options such as OS (osx, windows, linux) and processor architecture and pass it to a friend, but the main idea is that it simplifies the process for you and automatically detects your current platform.

lucaspiller 11y ago

Google Maps, like most web apps, incorrectly determines my language based on IP address. I can't find a way to change it from the UI, but you can force it to English with this: nativefier "http://maps.google.com/?hl=en"

vidarh 11y ago
If you use Chrome, and are not logged in to a Google account, Google Maps respects the Chrome language setting (just tested). Go to settings, "Show advanced settings" at the bottom and search for "Languages". If you are logged in to a Google account, the language settings on your Google account takes preference.
- lucaspiller 11y ago
  That isn't the case for me. I have my OS and Chrome set to English [0], but when, in Incognito mode, I go to http://maps.google.com/ http://maps.google.com/ it redirects me to https://www.google.it/maps/ https://www.google.it/maps/ and displays everything in Italian (I'm in Italy at the moment). [0] http://headers.cloxy.net/request.php http://headers.cloxy.net/request.php says my browser is sending "Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8"

mxuribe 11y ago

I had originally mis-read this: I read it as a super-simple wrapper that converts web pages/apps into a native mobile app. But it seems it actually creates a desktop application. I understand the use-case: avoiding bouncing between web browser tabs, but I guess I don't see that as annoying enough. I'm sure there are other use-cases that I'm not thinking of.

Kiro 11y ago
> I read it as a super-simple wrapper that converts web pages/apps into a native mobile app. I would love that. Just one command and you're done.
- czechdeveloper 11y ago
  I'm sure I've seen something like that. But I can't remember the name. Maybe someone else?
  - ParadoxOryx 11y ago
    I've seen this on HN before - https://github.com/mess110/glassic https://github.com/mess110/glassic
- mattlutze 11y ago
  Performance and experience is so much better from an actual native app, though. This trend toward building a parred-down version of a browser into link-rich apps is actually really troublesome, from both the broken user experience (different buttons for different common tasks, back and return functions not working consistently) and from a security standpoint.
- T-A 11y ago
  http://www.manifoldjs.com/ http://www.manifoldjs.com/ "manifoldJS helps you reach more users than ever by packaging your web experience as native apps across Android, iOS, and Windows."
curt15 11y ago

Gys 11y ago

So instead of having one browser with ten tabs you can create ten different 'browser apps'. Ok....

mosburger 11y ago
I use Fluid (http://fluidapp.com http://fluidapp.com) for a similar purpose as Nativfier... it's because my brain is hard-wired from years of use to equate Cmd-Tab (or Alt-Tab) with "task switch." My brain thinks of e-mail as a separate thing from my work (editor and browser), and I personally don't like conflating my browser with different tasks like e-mail. I know I could just learn Ctrl-Tab or Alt-{ or whatever to cycle through dozens of tabs, but Cmd-Tab works for me. Different strokes for different folks. I'll probably check Nativfier out because Fluid hasn't been updated significantly in a while and uses an old renderer, and it's a bit laggy w/ HuBoard (the front-end to GitHub issues that we use at work - it's pretty JS-intensive)
djacobs 11y ago
IMO for web apps that you have open all the time (maybe Asana, Google Docs), native OS navigation and window management is significantly better than tab navigation. Of course it doesn't have as much of a benefit if you do it for every tab you have open.

_droptable_ 11y ago

Honest question: Are Chrome apps "File->Create Application Shortcuts" not available on Mac OS X? Because on Linux you can create such apps very easily with this Chrome feature, and I'm pretty sure even cookies/history is separate from the main Chrome instance. Or is this better/different in some way?

websirnik 11y ago
Not available on Mac OS X
- est 11y ago
  make it available: chrome --app=http://google.com http://google.com
- tmikaeld 11y ago
  And has been for years, there isn't any signs of it becoming available either..

ehosca 11y ago

i'm probably missing something here but how about just saving a bookmark on the desktop?

jstx 11y ago
You are missing that saving a bookmark to the desktop does not provide a different instance of the browser when spinning up. It will just open a tab in the first browser it finds. Which is horrible if you consider something to be a core piece of software and you are unable to effectively cmd-tab to it. This is more of an OSX issue than windows, since windows will happily alt-tab amongst browser windows. OSX uses a less intuitive cmd-` for tabbing through program instances and still requires that the webapp is running in it's own window, in the same OSX window "Space", it cannot be minimized, and which will crash with the browser itself, irrespective of which tab is truly responsible [taking all your current state data with it]. I'm all for webapps supplanting native apps. But even presenting them as such requires something like Electron, and is completely counter to the trend of managing all tabs [webapps] as crony components of a master "WebBrowser" process.

andersonmvd 11y ago

I liked it. Reading Medium posts on your app was better than in a chrome browser. Congratulations. Side note: on Ubuntu there is no icon when I open the app. If it could get the favicon would be great, as well as the back button rather than pressing backspace.

skewedlines 11y ago
Actually, I originally intended this mainly to wrap single page web apps that tend to avoid using the back button and instead providing their own navigational controls on the page itself, so I did not include them in the UI. However, if desired, these basic navigational controls (back, forward, reload etc.) can be found in the application menu. Thanks for the feedback about the icon issue, I'll take note of that!

jbi 11y ago

This could be great for office users who are mostly using desktop applications. Acceptance for web apps is sometimes still hard to get. However, I haven't seen anything electron-based with proxy support. Any ideas on that?

monkmartinez 11y ago

This project and the projects I see linked in the comments thus far (MacPin, WebShell) are AWESOME. I really wish Python had a better story here, but I digress. Also, these types of projects are puzzling at the same time. I have been under the impression (right or wrong), that people didn't like/want/need desktop apps. With these types of projects I wonder if people don't know that they want desktop apps...

mwcampbell 11y ago
> I really wish Python had a better story here, but I digress. I know it's a digression, but I'm curious. What do you not like about packaging of Python apps on desktop platforms?
- monkmartinez 11y ago
  That they are not portable to the web and vice-versa in Python, first. Second, I can not do justice... so I will give you a great blog post that sums my thoughts nicely: https://glyph.twistedmatrix.com/2015/09/software-you-can-use.html https://glyph.twistedmatrix.com/2015/09/software-you-can-use...

woodruffw 11y ago

I'm not convinced that this process qualifies as making a web page "native". After all, this just seems to spawn a new browser instance with some UI stripped away. None of the normal qualities of native applications (native performance, hardware access, exposure to system interfaces/toolkits) apply.

ashark 11y ago
I'd say if your GUI layer is based on the HTML DOM then you're certainly not "native", for any useful definition of "native". Except maybe on ChromeOS, I suppose.

willmacdonald 11y ago

Are cookies shared between different apps ? One of the nice features of Fluid Pro was keeping cookies segregated.

skewedlines 11y ago
Cookies are isolated to the app it is built for, and right now the application name is the unique identifier for the app. You're right in that the application data should be segregated, and I'll look into a more robust method of uniquely identifying each app that is built.

mikewhy 11y ago

I tried doing the same thing using Electron. CPU usage isn't ideal, context menus wouldn't work, keyboard focus was an issue. Eventually I dropped it and have been using MacPin[1] for a while. There is also WebShell[2] [1]: https://github.com/kfix/MacPin https://github.com/kfix/MacPin [2]: https://github.com/djyde/WebShell https://github.com/djyde/WebShell

vmateixeira 11y ago
I believe this uses Electron under the hood.
- mikewhy 11y ago
  It does, therefore: - CPU usage is much higher than something using WKWebView - OS Back/Forward shortcuts don't work - No context menus - CMD+Click opens in your regular browser Which makes it a no-go for me, but YMMV.

mwcampbell 11y ago

This trend of a hundred desktop applications all bundling their own copy of Chromium really bothers me. I know the situation sucks on Windows, but on Mac, why not use the system WebKit framework? I know the decision was made upstream of this project, in Electron, but this project will increase the proliferation of app-private copies of Chromium. For the past year or so, when thinking about software bloat, I always come back to this sad bit of dialog from the novel _Off to Be the Wizard_: Phillip (time traveler from 1984): What on earth can a person do with 4 gigabytes of RAM? Martin (from 2012): Upgrade it immediately. Do we really want to make that situation even worse?

koko775 11y ago
> why not use the system WebKit framework? Same reason people often like to statically link. The system is guaranteed to be a moving target sooner or later, so new bugs may appear or disappear depending on a user-controlled action that's tedious to track if it's possible at all. Bundled code, on the other hand, is a fixed, known quality against which bugs can be tested, or source inspected, or otherwise debugged in a way system libraries typically cannot.
skewedlines 11y ago
I do agree with you on that, and there should be some form of Chromium that can be shared across applications to reduce the bloat of such packaged apps. Perhaps this is an issue with the architecture of Electron itself, which requires all such apps to contain their own version of Chromium? I wanted easy cross platform compatibility with minimal code, and Electron seemed like a good choice across for apps across Windows, OSX and Linux.
- mwcampbell 11y ago
  On OS X, a little Cocoa application in Objective-C using the system WebKit framework would probably do the trick. On Linux, a little GTK application in C using WebKitGTK would probably work. On Windows... I don't know. I know from firsthand that embedding the IE engine via the WebBrowser ActiveX control really sucks. I'm going to see if the WebKit WinCairo port is any good these days. If we must use CHromium, then the Chromium Embedded Framework is worth a look. It's a DLL, so in principle, it can be shared between applications. You'd still need some platform-specific code to create the window containing CEF, though.

rcthompson 11y ago

Hey, cool, it opens external links in my default browser. That's all I've ever wanted in a web-page-to-app tool. It's surprising no one has gotten this right before. Both Mozilla's Prism and Chrome's webbapp-izer functionality get this wrong. Edit: It doesn't support HTTP authentication, though. Any page that is supposed to present an HTTP auth dialog just goes straight to a 401. This means I can't wrap my personal Transmission/Syncthing servers using nativefier. Edit 2: Looks like this will be fixed soon[1]. [1] https://github.com/jiahaog/nativefier/issues/19 https://github.com/jiahaog/nativefier/issues/19

antoniuschan99 11y ago

I like this, but wish it would automatically convert to the correct icon (it's defaulting to the electron icon). I see that there are commands in the docs to do this, will try it in a bit :). Thanks! Just tried using this for Hacker News and noticed I can't go back :(.

skewedlines 11y ago
Yeah, that was one of the main concerns I had when I was developing this, it would be lovely if the app itself could automatically source and add them in automatically. It's really a hassle to manually add teh images, but I'm not really familiar with how to convert them into the appropriate format in Node.js in a quick and easy way. Will look into this in a future update!

katabasis 11y ago

This is amazing. I work in digital publishing at an art museum, and we are creating digital books as static HTML/CSS/JS files which rely on client-side interactivity for most features. Some people have asked about getting a desktop version of these books which they could download locally (scholars doing fieldwork, etc). I knew something like this was possible using Electron, but I figured I'd have to build it from scratch if I wanted it. Instead I just pointed this script at the beta version of our latest project[1] and the project built flawlessly in under a minute. Nice work! I know that the web as a platform has its problems, but it is the only truly universal runtime we have right now, and tools like this help realize this potential more fully. One question: is there a way to package pre-built copies as .dmg or .exe files so that non-technical users can download an app that is ready to go, without having to run the build script themselves? [1]: http://gettypubs.github.io/Terracottas/ http://gettypubs.github.io/Terracottas/

skewedlines 11y ago
I'm glad you like it! I think such an installer feature could be added in by integrating with https://github.com/loopline-systems/electron-builder https://github.com/loopline-systems/electron-builder, I'll see if I have time in the next few days to add this in before school starts.
icebraining 11y ago
This doesn't seem to create offline copies of the webapps, at least assuming by the examples given (maps.google.com and medium.com), which would be quite useless as static apps.

joeyspn 11y ago

Really useful! I actually started to build a similar utility as a side project with NW.js, but I never finished it because of lack of time... You should also add the ability to add chromium flags... https://discuss.atom.io/t/how-to-access-chrome-flags-in-electron/16470 https://discuss.atom.io/t/how-to-access-chrome-flags-in-elec...

sanj 11y ago

Very cool -- I wrapped my first app and it worked great. Sadly, when I gave to copy to a less technical coworker (ie, without node.js installed) and it open with a blank window. Is that expected?

kazinator 11y ago

Say what? What am I missing by having a simple web link on a desktop to any frequently accessed web page I want? Launch it, and there I am, in Google Maps or whatever. Does this natifier actually suck down some of the JavaScript so that it is locally hosted? If so, is there some check if the upstream software has changed and needs to be re-natified?

siquick 11y ago

Excellent work - well done

erlend_sh 11y ago

So cool! Any chance it could work as a web app? The install process seems fairly simply, but it's still command line. Could be a really good adoption trick if you make a web app that: 1. Lets me enter the basic info for a site I'd like to appify, e.g. app.moqups.com 2a. If successful, great, here's a download for your app (and the app is added to your list of supported web apps). 2b. Not successful: We urge to to send an email to the app creators so they can troubleshoot this issue together with us.

zubairq 11y ago

Absolutely incredible!