4 ms·

I've been very impressed with the few Electron apps I've seen out in the wild. Obviously the main one is Atom (as I believe this is what gave rise to Electron).

I've been very impressed with the few Electron apps I've seen out in the wild. Obviously the main one is Atom (as I believe this is what gave rise to Electron). But others include Kitematic and VS Code, the latter of which convinced me such an approach could produce a smooth UI. Generally, I find the way these apps look very attractive, much more so than any other cross-platform apps I've seen before (Swing, AWT, QT etc). While I agree the download size is less than ideal, I can't argue against it being a good compromise at the moment.

maccard 10y ago
The slack desktop app is another one, and it's not good.
- marcosscriven 10y ago
  What do you find is bad about it?
  - methyl 10y ago
    It's VERY memory heavy. When I open 4 channels it could eat as much as 4GB, comparing to 300MB per card when it's open in Chrome. That's why I started writing Chrome App which will simulate native Slack client and be much more memory efficient.
    - runn1ng 10y ago
      > writing Chrome app Note that Google will stop supporting Chrome Apps in 1 year or so. http://blog.chromium.org/2016/08/from-chrome-apps-to-web.html http://blog.chromium.org/2016/08/from-chrome-apps-to-web.htm...
      - methyl 10y ago
        This is too bad :(
    - lawnchair_larry 10y ago
      Writing a chrome app to save you from chrome's bloat seems like a dead end. Just write a native client, or at least java/c#.
      - methyl 10y ago
        It's not chrome's bloat, it's Slack that's for some reason broken. I don't have such problems with VSCode for example. Also it's reusing already opened Chrome instance which should make memory usage more optimized.
        lawnchair_larry 10y ago
        Slack might be making it worse, but come on. Chrome is huge. Check out the memory and cpu usage of VS Code, and compare that to any other text editor. An instance of chrome just for text editing blows my mind.
  - tretiy3 10y ago
    All those Electron apps are extremely slow on my mac (Intel Core 2 Duo mid 2010, 4Gb RAM). I am using Slack web version (in Chrome also) and can't find any difference, except it is just a tab among others.
    - krisdol 10y ago
      Atom and Spotify are pretty fast for me on OS X, but slack is both CPU and memory heavy. It idles at between 10 and 30% CPU usage, which is unacceptable.
  - jakobegger 10y ago
    Slack is pretty good for a web app. You can tell they really worked hard to make it feel native. But there are just some fundamental differences between desktop apps and web apps. Just like a website, the Slack desktop app is slow. Open Apple Messages, and you'll see all your messages instantly. Open Slack, and you'll be greeted by a loading screen, followed by a loading screen with an insightful quip. Click on a different channel, and you'll see another loading screen, followed by another loading screen with a different funny message. And then there are all these inonsistencies... Holding down the mouse on a popup menu doesn't work; you need to click to open, then click again to select. Resizing the sidebar is not possible.
    - maccard 10y ago
      I can't find a source for this right now, I've been searching, but I remember reading something about the Messages app (I can't remember if it was iOS or MacOs/OSX) is actually a webview app! Would love it if someone could find a source proving/disproving it.
      - jakobegger 10y ago
        This made me curious, and I checked by attaching a debugger to Messages. The content view with the bubbles is a web view. All the other views (sidebar, input field, etc.) are native controls. I guess this is a sort of "best of both worlds" approach. You have all the flexibility of HTML & CSS for complex content layout, and you get performance and usability of native sidebars and text fields.
        maccard 10y ago
        Interesting to know, thanks for checking!
  - maccard 10y ago
    As another commenter mentioned, it's extremely memory hungry. Right now, it's got 6 processes running, and it's chewing through a little over a gig of ram. I frequently (roughly once a week or so?) check process explorer and find slack hung and sitting on 3+GB. Performance is sluggish on both the high end machines I use regularly (Dual xeon workstation, and an i7 6700k with 32GB/16GB ram respectively). The search functionality brings the UI to a halt, and scrolling through the message history isn't remotely close to smooth. Startup times are also quite long. I closed the app, and re-ran it. it was 5 seconds before the window appeared, and another 5 before my chat window was populated.
D_Guidi 10y ago
Postman app (http://blog.getpostman.com/2016/08/02/introducing-postman-for-windows http://blog.getpostman.com/2016/08/02/introducing-postman-fo...) was released few days ago, too
jakobegger 10y ago
Atom is a pretty neat editor as long as you are only using it on small files. Try opening a 20MB SQL Dump. Fortunately, Atom will show a warning. If you click past that, everything will freeze while Atom eats up more than a Gigabyte of memory. Don't turn on syntax highlighting, or Atom will lock up and eat all your CPU. When you are done listening to your computer's fan, quit Atom. Then kill the "Atom Helper" process, which for some reason keeps on eating CPU even after you quit Atom. Now open the same file in BBEdit, or any other native Text Editor... and the file will open instantly, the app will be responsive, and syntax highlighting will work, because 20MB really isn't a file size that should be an issue for a text editor.
- tjalex 10y ago
  I've tested opening a few ~15MB log files (no syntax highlighting) with VS Code and Atom... I'm amazed that one editor will load within 2-3s and the other will take 15s (or more!) when they are both built on Electron.

maccard 10y ago

The slack desktop app is another one, and it's not good.

marcosscriven 10y ago
What do you find is bad about it?
- methyl 10y ago
  It's VERY memory heavy. When I open 4 channels it could eat as much as 4GB, comparing to 300MB per card when it's open in Chrome. That's why I started writing Chrome App which will simulate native Slack client and be much more memory efficient.
  - runn1ng 10y ago
    > writing Chrome app Note that Google will stop supporting Chrome Apps in 1 year or so. http://blog.chromium.org/2016/08/from-chrome-apps-to-web.html http://blog.chromium.org/2016/08/from-chrome-apps-to-web.htm...
    - methyl 10y ago
      This is too bad :(
  - lawnchair_larry 10y ago
    Writing a chrome app to save you from chrome's bloat seems like a dead end. Just write a native client, or at least java/c#.
    - methyl 10y ago
      It's not chrome's bloat, it's Slack that's for some reason broken. I don't have such problems with VSCode for example. Also it's reusing already opened Chrome instance which should make memory usage more optimized.
      - lawnchair_larry 10y ago
        Slack might be making it worse, but come on. Chrome is huge. Check out the memory and cpu usage of VS Code, and compare that to any other text editor. An instance of chrome just for text editing blows my mind.
- tretiy3 10y ago
  All those Electron apps are extremely slow on my mac (Intel Core 2 Duo mid 2010, 4Gb RAM). I am using Slack web version (in Chrome also) and can't find any difference, except it is just a tab among others.
  - krisdol 10y ago
    Atom and Spotify are pretty fast for me on OS X, but slack is both CPU and memory heavy. It idles at between 10 and 30% CPU usage, which is unacceptable.
- jakobegger 10y ago
  Slack is pretty good for a web app. You can tell they really worked hard to make it feel native. But there are just some fundamental differences between desktop apps and web apps. Just like a website, the Slack desktop app is slow. Open Apple Messages, and you'll see all your messages instantly. Open Slack, and you'll be greeted by a loading screen, followed by a loading screen with an insightful quip. Click on a different channel, and you'll see another loading screen, followed by another loading screen with a different funny message. And then there are all these inonsistencies... Holding down the mouse on a popup menu doesn't work; you need to click to open, then click again to select. Resizing the sidebar is not possible.
  - maccard 10y ago
    I can't find a source for this right now, I've been searching, but I remember reading something about the Messages app (I can't remember if it was iOS or MacOs/OSX) is actually a webview app! Would love it if someone could find a source proving/disproving it.
    - jakobegger 10y ago
      This made me curious, and I checked by attaching a debugger to Messages. The content view with the bubbles is a web view. All the other views (sidebar, input field, etc.) are native controls. I guess this is a sort of "best of both worlds" approach. You have all the flexibility of HTML & CSS for complex content layout, and you get performance and usability of native sidebars and text fields.
      - maccard 10y ago
        Interesting to know, thanks for checking!
- maccard 10y ago
  As another commenter mentioned, it's extremely memory hungry. Right now, it's got 6 processes running, and it's chewing through a little over a gig of ram. I frequently (roughly once a week or so?) check process explorer and find slack hung and sitting on 3+GB. Performance is sluggish on both the high end machines I use regularly (Dual xeon workstation, and an i7 6700k with 32GB/16GB ram respectively). The search functionality brings the UI to a halt, and scrolling through the message history isn't remotely close to smooth. Startup times are also quite long. I closed the app, and re-ran it. it was 5 seconds before the window appeared, and another 5 before my chat window was populated.

D_Guidi 10y ago

Postman app (http://blog.getpostman.com/2016/08/02/introducing-postman-for-windows http://blog.getpostman.com/2016/08/02/introducing-postman-fo...) was released few days ago, too

jakobegger 10y ago

Atom is a pretty neat editor as long as you are only using it on small files. Try opening a 20MB SQL Dump. Fortunately, Atom will show a warning. If you click past that, everything will freeze while Atom eats up more than a Gigabyte of memory. Don't turn on syntax highlighting, or Atom will lock up and eat all your CPU. When you are done listening to your computer's fan, quit Atom. Then kill the "Atom Helper" process, which for some reason keeps on eating CPU even after you quit Atom. Now open the same file in BBEdit, or any other native Text Editor... and the file will open instantly, the app will be responsive, and syntax highlighting will work, because 20MB really isn't a file size that should be an issue for a text editor.

tjalex 10y ago
I've tested opening a few ~15MB log files (no syntax highlighting) with VS Code and Atom... I'm amazed that one editor will load within 2-3s and the other will take 15s (or more!) when they are both built on Electron.