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seriously. and skype is a grand example of how shitty a native client can be. tired of this argument. if you put in the proper effort, your users won't care or

seriously. and skype is a grand example of how shitty a native client can be. tired of this argument. if you put in the proper effort, your users won't care or notice.

matthewmacleod 10y ago
You are of course correct. It's possible to make awful native applications, and good non-native applications. The sliders mean that you will trade performance off against ease-of-development. It will be easier to ship a basic Electron/web-stack app than a native one for multiple platforms. However, it will be harder to do this is in a high-performance and well-integrated way. I went through all this with Cordova back in the day when trying to build cross-platform mobile apps. I was able to ship apps quickly, but at the expense of quality – it's okay to do this so long as you are aware of the trade-off.
- catshirt 10y ago
  yep definitely. and there is definitely a cost and effort required to make Electron feel as good as native. depending on your feature requirements, this can get really hairy. i'm just exhausted by the "web apps feel so much worse than native!1" argument which is an over simplification and not a rule.
drdaeman 10y ago
Is Skype native? Except for the very old 4.x Linux version - which is native Qt - and comparably old Windows ones, I thought, all of the recent versions are webbrowser wrappers (one sort or another) with some occasional native widgets around that.
- drdaeman 10y ago
  (Can't edit the post above) But, of course, Skype issues aren't because of their UI nativeness. Their UI layer is... well, tolerable. Heck, I'd be happy if all I'd have to complain about Skype would be a crappy UI. But I don't think UI implementation has to do anything about why we love it so much. I mean, missing calls and messages every other week, random desync between clients and all the usual rituals that every other group call starts from (you can hear them accompanied with chants "can everyone hear me?", "$name are you here?", "tell me if you see my screen" and "let me drop the call and restart").
  - catshirt 10y ago
    i think i was still overreacting to prove a point. everything you're saying is right. my point is, even if i concede native is "better" or whatever, the difference should be negligible for most apps for all users (let alone "most" users).
Johnny_Brahms 10y ago
Skype for Linux is a web app. It is a lot worse than the old Qt client. Are the other platforms native? I thought they switched to webrtc in 2015 to be able to just use a simple web window wrapper for all platforms, just not Linux.
easuter 10y ago
The newer skype versions on Windows are web-based.

seriously. and skype is a grand example of how shitty a native client can be. tired of this argument. if you put in the proper effort, your users won't care or notice.

matthewmacleod 10y ago

You are of course correct. It's possible to make awful native applications, and good non-native applications. The sliders mean that you will trade performance off against ease-of-development. It will be easier to ship a basic Electron/web-stack app than a native one for multiple platforms. However, it will be harder to do this is in a high-performance and well-integrated way. I went through all this with Cordova back in the day when trying to build cross-platform mobile apps. I was able to ship apps quickly, but at the expense of quality – it's okay to do this so long as you are aware of the trade-off.

catshirt 10y ago
yep definitely. and there is definitely a cost and effort required to make Electron feel as good as native. depending on your feature requirements, this can get really hairy. i'm just exhausted by the "web apps feel so much worse than native!1" argument which is an over simplification and not a rule.

drdaeman 10y ago

Is Skype native? Except for the very old 4.x Linux version - which is native Qt - and comparably old Windows ones, I thought, all of the recent versions are webbrowser wrappers (one sort or another) with some occasional native widgets around that.

drdaeman 10y ago
(Can't edit the post above) But, of course, Skype issues aren't because of their UI nativeness. Their UI layer is... well, tolerable. Heck, I'd be happy if all I'd have to complain about Skype would be a crappy UI. But I don't think UI implementation has to do anything about why we love it so much. I mean, missing calls and messages every other week, random desync between clients and all the usual rituals that every other group call starts from (you can hear them accompanied with chants "can everyone hear me?", "$name are you here?", "tell me if you see my screen" and "let me drop the call and restart").
- catshirt 10y ago
  i think i was still overreacting to prove a point. everything you're saying is right. my point is, even if i concede native is "better" or whatever, the difference should be negligible for most apps for all users (let alone "most" users).

Johnny_Brahms 10y ago

Skype for Linux is a web app. It is a lot worse than the old Qt client. Are the other platforms native? I thought they switched to webrtc in 2015 to be able to just use a simple web window wrapper for all platforms, just not Linux.

easuter 10y ago

The newer skype versions on Windows are web-based.