4 ms·

So, another electron app for Desktop? I've heard anecdotal comments on HN about how electron based apps frequently hog resources and such an overkill as a repl

So, another electron app for Desktop? I've heard anecdotal comments on HN about how electron based apps frequently hog resources and such an overkill as a replacement for native apps. Anybody know of a dumb cross platform wrapper that does just enough HTML/JS for apps like this to work without the bloat?

sbarre 9y ago
Does the "bloat" in Electron come from the wrapper or from the rendering engine?
- zzalpha 9y ago
  If, by "rendering engine", you mean the full instance of Chromium being run to drive the app... the full instance of Chromium that nothing else on your machine shares... yeah, I guess you could say it's the rendering engine.
  - DonnyV 9y ago
    You know Electron runs on top of Nodejs. How do you know it's not that?
    - zzalpha 9y ago
      Sure, it could also be that! But Chromium is undoubtedly a significant part of the problem.
  - sbarre 9y ago
    I guess I'm wondering about OP's comment and whether a slimmer wrapper would make much of a difference. No doubt a modern browser engine like Chromium is an incredibly complex thing and requires a lot of resources, etc.. Would optimizing the wrapper even very aggressively make any difference?
pspeter3 9y ago
No, in this case they are using PhoneGap for mobile. I also think that the electron hate is overhyped. If you really don't want the overhead, use the website instead. (eg Slack)
- zzalpha 9y ago
  I also think that the electron hate is overhyped. If you really don't want the overhead, use the website instead. (eg Slack) So... you think the Electron hate is "overhyped". And then recommend people not use Electron apps if they are concerned about bloat. This strikes me as a bit of a contradiction...
pcunite 9y ago
Desktop apps are built on top of Electron and mobile apps on top of PhoneGap.
jszymborski 9y ago
The Telegram client is a good example of how to do this right [0]. You can acheive this in python w/ pyQt/pySide as well... just include a QWebView and hook into the javascript [1]. Avoiding the whole server & network stack makes things run obviously lighter. [0] https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop [1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6447011/pyqt-pyside-webkit-and-exposing-methods-from-to-javascript https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6447011/pyqt-pyside-webk...
- kodablah 9y ago
  I believe QWebView w/ QtWebKit was deprecated in favor of QWebEngine which is Chromium thereby causing the same problems as Electron (bulky, multi-process which is the way of the browser these days). Granted QtWebKit appears to be maintained in a fork at [0]. If someone wanted to use Chrome, a more bare-bones approach w/ Qt might be CEF. An example in Python is here [1]. 0 - https://github.com/annulen/webkit https://github.com/annulen/webkit (see the wiki) 1 - https://github.com/cztomczak/cefpython/blob/master/examples/qt.py https://github.com/cztomczak/cefpython/blob/master/examples/...
plehoux 9y ago
Philippe here, one of Missive co-founders. Email client job is to render HTML emails, whatever tech you choose for the UI, you still end up rendering HTML. Electron makes sense.

sbarre 9y ago

Does the "bloat" in Electron come from the wrapper or from the rendering engine?

zzalpha 9y ago
If, by "rendering engine", you mean the full instance of Chromium being run to drive the app... the full instance of Chromium that nothing else on your machine shares... yeah, I guess you could say it's the rendering engine.
- DonnyV 9y ago
  You know Electron runs on top of Nodejs. How do you know it's not that?
  - zzalpha 9y ago
    Sure, it could also be that! But Chromium is undoubtedly a significant part of the problem.
- sbarre 9y ago
  I guess I'm wondering about OP's comment and whether a slimmer wrapper would make much of a difference. No doubt a modern browser engine like Chromium is an incredibly complex thing and requires a lot of resources, etc.. Would optimizing the wrapper even very aggressively make any difference?

pspeter3 9y ago

No, in this case they are using PhoneGap for mobile. I also think that the electron hate is overhyped. If you really don't want the overhead, use the website instead. (eg Slack)

zzalpha 9y ago
I also think that the electron hate is overhyped. If you really don't want the overhead, use the website instead. (eg Slack) So... you think the Electron hate is "overhyped". And then recommend people not use Electron apps if they are concerned about bloat. This strikes me as a bit of a contradiction...

pcunite 9y ago

Desktop apps are built on top of Electron and mobile apps on top of PhoneGap.

jszymborski 9y ago

The Telegram client is a good example of how to do this right [0]. You can acheive this in python w/ pyQt/pySide as well... just include a QWebView and hook into the javascript [1]. Avoiding the whole server & network stack makes things run obviously lighter. [0] https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop [1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6447011/pyqt-pyside-webkit-and-exposing-methods-from-to-javascript https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6447011/pyqt-pyside-webk...

kodablah 9y ago
I believe QWebView w/ QtWebKit was deprecated in favor of QWebEngine which is Chromium thereby causing the same problems as Electron (bulky, multi-process which is the way of the browser these days). Granted QtWebKit appears to be maintained in a fork at [0]. If someone wanted to use Chrome, a more bare-bones approach w/ Qt might be CEF. An example in Python is here [1]. 0 - https://github.com/annulen/webkit https://github.com/annulen/webkit (see the wiki) 1 - https://github.com/cztomczak/cefpython/blob/master/examples/qt.py https://github.com/cztomczak/cefpython/blob/master/examples/...

plehoux 9y ago

Philippe here, one of Missive co-founders. Email client job is to render HTML emails, whatever tech you choose for the UI, you still end up rendering HTML. Electron makes sense.