17 ms·

Trello Desktop for Mac and Windows: Get More Done Without Distractions

100 points by okhudeira 9y ago

stevekinney 9y ago
I haven't had a chance to download it yet, but my suspicion says it's probably an Electron application. What do you all feel about this practice of taking long-lived web applications and getting them out of a tab and into a desktop shell with a place on the dock/task bar and the ability to Atl/Control-Tab?
- bengale 9y ago
  I'm not sure anyone thinks its ideal but there is certainly software built with it that just wouldn't otherwise be, no matter how many people talk about Qt on here.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    I don't mind. Electron is just kids re-discovering MSHTML.dll.
- Willson50 9y ago
  Definitely some sort of electron app. Certain things are broken like trying to use your webcam to take a profile photo because it doesn't know how to ask for browser permissions. I really hope this trend stops soon.
  - danso 9y ago
    > I really hope this trend stops soon. In what way? That services stop trying to be desktop applications and live on the web and web browser? Or that Electron itself is not an adequate framework for cross-platform development?
  - chrisco255 9y ago
    This trend isn't going anywhere. It's efficient from a human resources perspective. It is very expensive to build and maintain products across native desktop (Mac and Windows), mobile (iOS and Android) and web. That's 5 platforms. Web on its own is hard enough with probably 6 or 7 different browser platforms and various screen sizes to accommodate. Electron is a godsend, sub-native performance or not.
    - noir_lord 9y ago
      Agreed, also it's a case of "good enough but will get better", the more people who use electron the more its performance will improve. I was bearish on it initially but it's starting to prove itself in a way where I'm seriously considering it. Also as a former desktop developer who moved to the web a lot of what it does looks pretty good tbh. That and TypeScript has completely changed my opinion of "client side" web development, it's solved so much of the pain it's unbelievable and is good enough I'd consider it for desktop development for me the killer example is vscode - proof that you can write fast applications on the platform.
      - module0000 9y ago
        >> I was bearish on it initially but it's starting to prove itself Your inner trader is peeking out... :)
    - aschampion 9y ago
      > It is very expensive to build and maintain products across native desktop Yet (modulo mobile) somehow companies managed to do this in the 90s with far less productive development tools. The difference is the diluted power of the consumer: when software was a purchased product made for Ks of subscribing customers, small contingents of customers being upset about subpar UI and performance was a real threat to the viability of your business. Now Outlook or any Amazon app can be absolute slow, buggy garbage on nearly every platform (and they are), but the enormous customer base (diluting collective action) and entrenchment of locked-in platforms and data mean there's little incentive to obsess about product quality. Instead companies prioritize cost reduction, new customer acquisition (focusing on product chrome refreshes instead of robustness), or just give over to development momentum apathetic to quality.
- dpflan 9y ago
  I haven't downloaded either. You mentioned "out of a tab" and 'Atl/Control-Tab' context switching. I usually pin such an application in the browser; this makes it easy to go visit the site (on OSX and Chrome, use CMD+<tab #>, pinning makes it one of the first tabs so CMD+1 as an example) and easy to use the browser as intended and switch back to the web-app. You could look at the memory footprint of the tab vs. the application and the performance implications of using a desktop app vs. the web-app. That could be useful info. :)
- jbob2000 9y ago
  It's an inevitable step for any mature software application. At some point, the business side will want a feature that web browsers won't allow or have poor support for. Initially, developers push back and this feature gets delayed, but sure enough, executives get eager and eventually make the call to build a desktop app. I have seen this twice now; our file transfer service was being hindered by poor file API support by the browsers, so we built a desktop app to wrap the web app and provide better file access. And for a shopping app to get around iframe restrictions.
- seanalltogether 9y ago
  Notifications are always the killer feature for me on desktop and it's one of the main reasons i don't use gmail/hangouts/google calendar in the browser. Sure you can keep them open all day in a browser window, but i don't want permanent browser windows open all day.
  - itp 9y ago
    I exclusively use those applications inside the browser and I have had no complaints about notifications. They ask for permission, I grant it, and I get (native, at least on OS X) notifications that match the rest of my system. Genuinely curious, is there something I'm missing out on / some way they work better out of the browser?
- joshuacc 9y ago
  > What do you all feel about this practice of taking long-lived web applications and getting them out of a tab and into a desktop shell with a place on the dock/task bar and the ability to Atl/Control-Tab? I intentionally do this with Chrome's Tools > More Tools > Add to Desktop > Open as New Window option. Wrapping Spotify Web, Outlook 365 and HipChat into their own "application"s lets me treat them as if they are native apps, but for some reason it uses a lot less resources than the actual native apps.
  - aschampion 9y ago
    > but for some reason it uses a lot less resources than the actual native apps. Because most "actual native apps" now are not native apps but electron or some other HTML + JS + CSS wrapper running an entire separate browser to render the app. By running the web page as separate windows you're effectively getting the same app but sharing the browser overhead.
  - chriswbarrett 9y ago
    Holy crap, thanks! I was considering wrapping a small tool I made in electron but this fixes the need entirely
  - 303darthbobby 9y ago
    You have changed my life
- rorykoehler 9y ago
  Pointless. Works great in the browser. Won't install this
- alkonaut 9y ago
  Useless. I'd pay for many web apps to bring a snappy native experience, but if an app is slacklike I won't use it even if free. Maybe I'm missing the key point of a desktop Trello - what does it do that can't be done on a webpage?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
JamesMcMinn 9y ago
No Linux version is disappointing, especially considering it's an Electron app. Other than global shortcuts, it doesn't seem to offer much over using the web version as a Chrome app with its own launcher and window.
- neoromantique 9y ago
  It actually is just another Electron app.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
harisvs-code 9y ago
Linux anyone?
drinchev 9y ago
It actually is an electron app λ /Applications/Trello.app/Contents ◆ tree -L 2 . ├── Frameworks │ ├── Electron\ Framework.framework │ ├── Trello\ Helper\ EH.app │ ├── Trello\ Helper\ NP.app │ └── Trello\ Helper.app ├── Info.plist Tried it. It's a bit laggy and seems not much different than the website itself.
- CD1212 9y ago
  Oh dear. That's a shame. I came here to post a comment asking if it was an Electron app. Hopefully Electron's overhead can become lighter in the future making useful applications like this less bloated.
- kitotik 9y ago
  Yeah, extremely disappointed in this. I’ve been a heavy Trello advocate since it launched, but the lack of real native clients puts a pretty low ceiling on it’s usefulness at scale. Atlassian has plenty of native developers on their team, not sure why they would take this route...
  - bluedino 9y ago
    A true native client would be a lot of work. Maintain feature parity without adding new features. Identical UI including all the quirks. Is having a native app going to gain them any users? Maybe for user who can't have a browser installed, but they might not be able to have an internet connection either...
    - simonswords82 9y ago
      I get that, and I understand why they used Electron. But given Electron in this instance is basically a browser for Trello for all intents and purposes I don't see the point of it.
      - zdkl 9y ago
        I'm slowly shifting from your opinion to a general distrust of user configured browsers for providing a UI to "sensitive"(authed, billing) APIs.
zokier 9y ago
I love the irony of having the marketing lines "Experience Trello without distractions" and "Native notifications" follow directly each other in the trailer.
- jedberg 9y ago
  Well to be fair, the Trello notifications don't distract you from using Trello...
sp332 9y ago
Why is this screenshot rendered so badly? https://blog.trello.com/hs-fs/hubfs/desktop-shortcuts-condensed-pt2@2x.png?t=1505320531692&width=647&name=desktop-shortcuts-condensed-pt2@2x.png https://blog.trello.com/hs-fs/hubfs/desktop-shortcuts-conden... From the URL it might have been dynamically resized?
- zbuttram 9y ago
  Yeah, whatever is doing the resizing isn't doing a great job. You can see the original looks fine if you remove the query string: https://blog.trello.com/hs-fs/hubfs/desktop-shortcuts-condensed-pt2@2x.png https://blog.trello.com/hs-fs/hubfs/desktop-shortcuts-conden... It's also pretty darn big though.
simonswords82 9y ago
I live in a web browser day to day. I'm constantly in and out of Teamwork, Harvest, Google Drive, Slack, Google Analytics etc etc. Trello is also a core part of our workflow (we're custom software developers) and so Cmd/Ctrl + T to open a new tab and type in "tre"...<Enter> to load Trello is basically muscle memory at this point. All of that is to say, what's the need for a "native" app? I say "native" because it's Electron, which isn't really native per se. But still, why??
- reustle 9y ago
  I also live in the browser and prefer everything to be in it, but I do know plenty of people who prefer their desktop apps, especially some windows users.
  - Brakenshire 9y ago
    Useful for alt-tab.
    - riquito 9y ago
      You can just drag out the tab to popup another window to get a working alt-tab flow
      - mikewhy 9y ago
        On macOS it's slightly different, and the separate chrome windows won't get the same treatment as a separate app.
      - Brakenshire 9y ago
        I'm on Gnome, different windows of the same application get grouped together. Useful to have the different logo, and separate from the browser. No reason this has to require an electron wrapper, you could do it with the 'save to desktop' options, not sure whether any browser actually offers it yet though.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
michaelbuckbee 9y ago
FWIW - I've been using Trello in a http://fluidapp.com/ http://fluidapp.com/ and it's been pretty minimal in terms of resource usage and works well.
dangoor 9y ago
To all of those saying "why not just use the webapp directly?", a global hotkey to add new items is probably the main thing that caused me to not take Trello seriously as a personal task manager. Being able to instantly collect a new task to get it out of my head and worry about it later is a key feature for me. This app will do that, so I'll seriously think about Trello again.
- baldfat 9y ago
  I made one with Auto Hotkey a while back. Works pretty well for the time. I think if I used headless Chrome I could get it to be even a little better.
eggs_and_avo 9y ago
Get more done without distractions: Ditch "productivity" software and just use a calendar and a list of monthly, yearly goals. It doesn't require a browser and 2+ GB of memory! It won't shutdown one day, and the best part is there's no ads... notifications... stickers... emojis... easter eggs... or whatever else is considered "productive" these days.
sunzoje 9y ago
Paws for Trello was acquired by Trello[http://friendlyfox.es/pawsfortrello/ http://friendlyfox.es/pawsfortrello/].
purplezooey 9y ago
Is it just me or is Trello the most overrated software ever.. stack some lists, group them, color them, collaboration... woo.. could have done that with a google doc.
freqn 9y ago
Ugh.. Sorry, but an additional app is more of a distraction than a new tab for me.
neilsimp1 9y ago
I've been using ABoards for Trello on Windows 10. Is there any reason to try this instead of ABoards? http://abdev.ro/trello/ http://abdev.ro/trello/

100 points by okhudeira 9y ago

I haven't had a chance to download it yet, but my suspicion says it's probably an Electron application. What do you all feel about this practice of taking long-lived web applications and getting them out of a tab and into a desktop shell with a place on the dock/task bar and the ability to Atl/Control-Tab?

bengale 9y ago
I'm not sure anyone thinks its ideal but there is certainly software built with it that just wouldn't otherwise be, no matter how many people talk about Qt on here.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  I don't mind. Electron is just kids re-discovering MSHTML.dll.
Willson50 9y ago
Definitely some sort of electron app. Certain things are broken like trying to use your webcam to take a profile photo because it doesn't know how to ask for browser permissions. I really hope this trend stops soon.
- danso 9y ago
  > I really hope this trend stops soon. In what way? That services stop trying to be desktop applications and live on the web and web browser? Or that Electron itself is not an adequate framework for cross-platform development?
- chrisco255 9y ago
  This trend isn't going anywhere. It's efficient from a human resources perspective. It is very expensive to build and maintain products across native desktop (Mac and Windows), mobile (iOS and Android) and web. That's 5 platforms. Web on its own is hard enough with probably 6 or 7 different browser platforms and various screen sizes to accommodate. Electron is a godsend, sub-native performance or not.
  - noir_lord 9y ago
    Agreed, also it's a case of "good enough but will get better", the more people who use electron the more its performance will improve. I was bearish on it initially but it's starting to prove itself in a way where I'm seriously considering it. Also as a former desktop developer who moved to the web a lot of what it does looks pretty good tbh. That and TypeScript has completely changed my opinion of "client side" web development, it's solved so much of the pain it's unbelievable and is good enough I'd consider it for desktop development for me the killer example is vscode - proof that you can write fast applications on the platform.
    - module0000 9y ago
      >> I was bearish on it initially but it's starting to prove itself Your inner trader is peeking out... :)
  - aschampion 9y ago
    > It is very expensive to build and maintain products across native desktop Yet (modulo mobile) somehow companies managed to do this in the 90s with far less productive development tools. The difference is the diluted power of the consumer: when software was a purchased product made for Ks of subscribing customers, small contingents of customers being upset about subpar UI and performance was a real threat to the viability of your business. Now Outlook or any Amazon app can be absolute slow, buggy garbage on nearly every platform (and they are), but the enormous customer base (diluting collective action) and entrenchment of locked-in platforms and data mean there's little incentive to obsess about product quality. Instead companies prioritize cost reduction, new customer acquisition (focusing on product chrome refreshes instead of robustness), or just give over to development momentum apathetic to quality.
dpflan 9y ago
I haven't downloaded either. You mentioned "out of a tab" and 'Atl/Control-Tab' context switching. I usually pin such an application in the browser; this makes it easy to go visit the site (on OSX and Chrome, use CMD+<tab #>, pinning makes it one of the first tabs so CMD+1 as an example) and easy to use the browser as intended and switch back to the web-app. You could look at the memory footprint of the tab vs. the application and the performance implications of using a desktop app vs. the web-app. That could be useful info. :)
jbob2000 9y ago
It's an inevitable step for any mature software application. At some point, the business side will want a feature that web browsers won't allow or have poor support for. Initially, developers push back and this feature gets delayed, but sure enough, executives get eager and eventually make the call to build a desktop app. I have seen this twice now; our file transfer service was being hindered by poor file API support by the browsers, so we built a desktop app to wrap the web app and provide better file access. And for a shopping app to get around iframe restrictions.
seanalltogether 9y ago
Notifications are always the killer feature for me on desktop and it's one of the main reasons i don't use gmail/hangouts/google calendar in the browser. Sure you can keep them open all day in a browser window, but i don't want permanent browser windows open all day.
- itp 9y ago
  I exclusively use those applications inside the browser and I have had no complaints about notifications. They ask for permission, I grant it, and I get (native, at least on OS X) notifications that match the rest of my system. Genuinely curious, is there something I'm missing out on / some way they work better out of the browser?
joshuacc 9y ago
> What do you all feel about this practice of taking long-lived web applications and getting them out of a tab and into a desktop shell with a place on the dock/task bar and the ability to Atl/Control-Tab? I intentionally do this with Chrome's Tools > More Tools > Add to Desktop > Open as New Window option. Wrapping Spotify Web, Outlook 365 and HipChat into their own "application"s lets me treat them as if they are native apps, but for some reason it uses a lot less resources than the actual native apps.
- aschampion 9y ago
  > but for some reason it uses a lot less resources than the actual native apps. Because most "actual native apps" now are not native apps but electron or some other HTML + JS + CSS wrapper running an entire separate browser to render the app. By running the web page as separate windows you're effectively getting the same app but sharing the browser overhead.
- chriswbarrett 9y ago
  Holy crap, thanks! I was considering wrapping a small tool I made in electron but this fixes the need entirely
- 303darthbobby 9y ago
  You have changed my life
rorykoehler 9y ago
Pointless. Works great in the browser. Won't install this
alkonaut 9y ago
Useless. I'd pay for many web apps to bring a snappy native experience, but if an app is slacklike I won't use it even if free. Maybe I'm missing the key point of a desktop Trello - what does it do that can't be done on a webpage?

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

JamesMcMinn 9y ago

No Linux version is disappointing, especially considering it's an Electron app. Other than global shortcuts, it doesn't seem to offer much over using the web version as a Chrome app with its own launcher and window.

neoromantique 9y ago
It actually is just another Electron app.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

harisvs-code 9y ago

Linux anyone?

drinchev 9y ago

It actually is an electron app λ /Applications/Trello.app/Contents ◆ tree -L 2 . ├── Frameworks │ ├── Electron\ Framework.framework │ ├── Trello\ Helper\ EH.app │ ├── Trello\ Helper\ NP.app │ └── Trello\ Helper.app ├── Info.plist Tried it. It's a bit laggy and seems not much different than the website itself.

CD1212 9y ago
Oh dear. That's a shame. I came here to post a comment asking if it was an Electron app. Hopefully Electron's overhead can become lighter in the future making useful applications like this less bloated.
kitotik 9y ago
Yeah, extremely disappointed in this. I’ve been a heavy Trello advocate since it launched, but the lack of real native clients puts a pretty low ceiling on it’s usefulness at scale. Atlassian has plenty of native developers on their team, not sure why they would take this route...
- bluedino 9y ago
  A true native client would be a lot of work. Maintain feature parity without adding new features. Identical UI including all the quirks. Is having a native app going to gain them any users? Maybe for user who can't have a browser installed, but they might not be able to have an internet connection either...
  - simonswords82 9y ago
    I get that, and I understand why they used Electron. But given Electron in this instance is basically a browser for Trello for all intents and purposes I don't see the point of it.
    - zdkl 9y ago
      I'm slowly shifting from your opinion to a general distrust of user configured browsers for providing a UI to "sensitive"(authed, billing) APIs.

zokier 9y ago

I love the irony of having the marketing lines "Experience Trello without distractions" and "Native notifications" follow directly each other in the trailer.

jedberg 9y ago
Well to be fair, the Trello notifications don't distract you from using Trello...

sp332 9y ago

Why is this screenshot rendered so badly? https://blog.trello.com/hs-fs/hubfs/desktop-shortcuts-condensed-pt2@2x.png?t=1505320531692&width=647&name=desktop-shortcuts-condensed-pt2@2x.png https://blog.trello.com/hs-fs/hubfs/desktop-shortcuts-conden... From the URL it might have been dynamically resized?

zbuttram 9y ago
Yeah, whatever is doing the resizing isn't doing a great job. You can see the original looks fine if you remove the query string: https://blog.trello.com/hs-fs/hubfs/desktop-shortcuts-condensed-pt2@2x.png https://blog.trello.com/hs-fs/hubfs/desktop-shortcuts-conden... It's also pretty darn big though.

simonswords82 9y ago

I live in a web browser day to day. I'm constantly in and out of Teamwork, Harvest, Google Drive, Slack, Google Analytics etc etc. Trello is also a core part of our workflow (we're custom software developers) and so Cmd/Ctrl + T to open a new tab and type in "tre"...<Enter> to load Trello is basically muscle memory at this point. All of that is to say, what's the need for a "native" app? I say "native" because it's Electron, which isn't really native per se. But still, why??

reustle 9y ago
I also live in the browser and prefer everything to be in it, but I do know plenty of people who prefer their desktop apps, especially some windows users.
- Brakenshire 9y ago
  Useful for alt-tab.
  - riquito 9y ago
    You can just drag out the tab to popup another window to get a working alt-tab flow
    - mikewhy 9y ago
      On macOS it's slightly different, and the separate chrome windows won't get the same treatment as a separate app.
    - Brakenshire 9y ago
      I'm on Gnome, different windows of the same application get grouped together. Useful to have the different logo, and separate from the browser. No reason this has to require an electron wrapper, you could do it with the 'save to desktop' options, not sure whether any browser actually offers it yet though.
- pjmlp 9y ago

michaelbuckbee 9y ago

FWIW - I've been using Trello in a http://fluidapp.com/ http://fluidapp.com/ and it's been pretty minimal in terms of resource usage and works well.

dangoor 9y ago

To all of those saying "why not just use the webapp directly?", a global hotkey to add new items is probably the main thing that caused me to not take Trello seriously as a personal task manager. Being able to instantly collect a new task to get it out of my head and worry about it later is a key feature for me. This app will do that, so I'll seriously think about Trello again.

baldfat 9y ago
I made one with Auto Hotkey a while back. Works pretty well for the time. I think if I used headless Chrome I could get it to be even a little better.

eggs_and_avo 9y ago

Get more done without distractions: Ditch "productivity" software and just use a calendar and a list of monthly, yearly goals. It doesn't require a browser and 2+ GB of memory! It won't shutdown one day, and the best part is there's no ads... notifications... stickers... emojis... easter eggs... or whatever else is considered "productive" these days.

sunzoje 9y ago

Paws for Trello was acquired by Trello[http://friendlyfox.es/pawsfortrello/ http://friendlyfox.es/pawsfortrello/].

purplezooey 9y ago

Is it just me or is Trello the most overrated software ever.. stack some lists, group them, color them, collaboration... woo.. could have done that with a google doc.

freqn 9y ago

Ugh.. Sorry, but an additional app is more of a distraction than a new tab for me.

neilsimp1 9y ago

I've been using ABoards for Trello on Windows 10. Is there any reason to try this instead of ABoards? http://abdev.ro/trello/ http://abdev.ro/trello/