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I'd argue that the HTML/CSS/JS layer is more powerful and more extensible than any native rendering layer. We are building some awesome UI components using thi

by a85 10y ago

I'd argue that the HTML/CSS/JS layer is more powerful and more extensible than any native rendering layer. We are building some awesome UI components using this: http://blog.getpostman.com/2017/02/28/introducing-the-new-data-editor/ http://blog.getpostman.com/2017/02/28/introducing-the-new-da... Things that we build for the app are also available for our web components instantly. React makes this even easier.

ttd 10y ago
Any thoughts on WPF in comparison?
johnflan 10y ago
That might be true, all UI development over the last few years has gone into the JS environment. But the responsiveness of native always wins out for me. Nice UI is not good UX
wlib 10y ago
I see you have to respond to everyone in the comments when they call out that this isn't actually native. It is true, and normally, Electron would imply _significant_ performance issues. But, considering this whole thing is a network I/O visualizer, making a truly native app would not help at all in the long run. Also, you get the benefit of a common cross-OS experience. You made the right decision.
simion314 10y ago
Not sure if you know but in native APIs like Qt you are not limited to the built in components, if you need a custom widget you usually use OOP inheritance and override some methods like paint, maybe hook into some events and you get a custom widget. If you want a fancy button(that you can't get by tweaking existing properties or using styling) you inherit the Button class and add your stuff. What I hare in Web is that there is not a reusable gridView/listView that is optimized, you always have to create your own or find one specific for the framework/library/thing you use in this project.
Sanddancer 10y ago
Things like WPF/XAML can also use an XML-style tree, and the manipulation tools that entails, for UI. However, there are a number of other things they bring to the table that quickly outstrip anything that web-based objects can provide. For example, one can define custom elements, so instead of having a bunch of <Div>s defining things and needing to define things based on ids, you can create a custom tag, like <StatusBar> that gives everything you need plus makes your app layout that much cleaner. It gets better when you start adding in the things that javascript makes hard, like concurrency and parallelism. For example, with C#, I can do something like var results = URLs.Select((t) => { Task.Run(SomeLongRunningFunction(t)); } ); to start a series of background tasks handling HTML requests. The equivalent for JavaScript involves the much more restrictive WebWorker API, and requires me to put those small worker functions in their own page/file, or use much uglier data uris which aren't universally supported. HTML/CSS/JS just fall apart once you start getting into more interesting applications.

by a85 10y ago

ttd 10y ago

Any thoughts on WPF in comparison?

johnflan 10y ago

That might be true, all UI development over the last few years has gone into the JS environment. But the responsiveness of native always wins out for me. Nice UI is not good UX

wlib 10y ago

I see you have to respond to everyone in the comments when they call out that this isn't actually native. It is true, and normally, Electron would imply _significant_ performance issues. But, considering this whole thing is a network I/O visualizer, making a truly native app would not help at all in the long run. Also, you get the benefit of a common cross-OS experience. You made the right decision.

simion314 10y ago

Not sure if you know but in native APIs like Qt you are not limited to the built in components, if you need a custom widget you usually use OOP inheritance and override some methods like paint, maybe hook into some events and you get a custom widget. If you want a fancy button(that you can't get by tweaking existing properties or using styling) you inherit the Button class and add your stuff. What I hare in Web is that there is not a reusable gridView/listView that is optimized, you always have to create your own or find one specific for the framework/library/thing you use in this project.

Sanddancer 10y ago

Things like WPF/XAML can also use an XML-style tree, and the manipulation tools that entails, for UI. However, there are a number of other things they bring to the table that quickly outstrip anything that web-based objects can provide. For example, one can define custom elements, so instead of having a bunch of <Div>s defining things and needing to define things based on ids, you can create a custom tag, like <StatusBar> that gives everything you need plus makes your app layout that much cleaner. It gets better when you start adding in the things that javascript makes hard, like concurrency and parallelism. For example, with C#, I can do something like var results = URLs.Select((t) => { Task.Run(SomeLongRunningFunction(t)); } ); to start a series of background tasks handling HTML requests. The equivalent for JavaScript involves the much more restrictive WebWorker API, and requires me to put those small worker functions in their own page/file, or use much uglier data uris which aren't universally supported. HTML/CSS/JS just fall apart once you start getting into more interesting applications.