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I'm typically the defender of electron on these threads. I think its a great way for devs to get an MVP out there quickly. But there is a time and a place for e
by roryisok 8y ago
I'm typically the defender of electron on these threads. I think its a great way for devs to get an MVP out there quickly. But there is a time and a place for electron.
electron good
- IDEs, markdown editors, visual git clients, things that are front and center
electron bad
- music players, tray notifiers, app launchers, things that work in the background
On windows and mac I use foobar for music and greenshot for screen grabs because they use minimal resources.
- wst_ 8y agoSo now Foobar2000 is available for Mac? Mister, you've made my day! It's only beta from what I see but I am going to try it anyway. Thank you.
- lediur 8y agoHaving used foobar2000 for many many years, I've loved its power and customizability, but I do wish that there was a modern way to customize its UI. The basics are simple, but if you want to do styling tweaks or anything approaching a "custom" UI, you need to start hacking away at an obscure C++ SDK or an even weirder mishmash of GDI+ and old JavaScript. If there was a modern and easily customizable frontend to foobar2000's core audio and media library engine, I'd be in love. Something like Zeit's Hyper, but for music. I'd be willing to trade off Electron resource usage if it meant I could set up the UI just how I like it.
- brusch64 8y agoThats's why I've stopped using foobar2000 and changed to Musicbee instead. Not as flexibel, but much easier for me to get a good looking music player on Windows with all the functions I like.
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y agoReally? I was always wondering why people would care about the looks of a (otherwise very functional) music app. I actually almost never look at it, it simply runs in the background!
- brusch64 8y agoFor me it is pretty important. I am listening to full albums most of the time and don't like shuffle play at all. So I am looking over all artists / albums every time I want to listen to something different. A big plus for me is a beautiful list with all the album covers.
- Darkstack 8y agoI still use Foobar2000 on Windows (cmus on Linux), but i wonder why everyone want a Custom UI (Skins) in media player, Is it an old WinAmp feature everyone is nostalgic for ?
- tomcooks 8y agoSeeking a temp dopamine fix from spending hours perfecting the look of the UI. Same goes for desktop environment "ricing".
- lediur 8y agoFor me I think it's because music is a hobby I care a lot about, and I'd like the "option but not the obligation" to easily improve my experience. I've tried a bunch of other music players over the years (on the go, Plexamp seems the most promising in the "access and play all the weird formats in my music collection anywhere in the world, look nice, and get out of my way" category) but I keep coming back to foobar2000 for the sheer capability and flexibility to tweak how I manage and interact with my music every day.
- quantummkv 8y agoThe main reason I went with electron is that fantastic system tray integration. System tray integration with the native .Net is an unholy mess. The windows 10 UWP apps do not have a way to integrate with the taskbar. WPF requires interop with win32 code or a half baked 10 year old depreciated WinForms component. And none of the native solutions allow me to shape and design the UI like I want to without compromises. Electron may not the best in every aspect. But it was the only sensible and feasible choice for what I wanted my app to behave like. For me, a small performance hit is justified for being able to make exactly what I want.
- shakna 8y agoUWP has access to the notification area, with badge and toasts to control interaction. The term systray has gone away, as Microsoft reaims developers to use that area differently.
- scaryclam 8y agoElectron system tray integration is very broken on most linux systems.
- quantummkv 8y agoThat is mostly because as far as I know, other than ubuntu no distro supports tray icons. And even then it is basically a workaround. Gnome removed support in 3.20 and I don't know about other linux desktop environments. But for windows, which i primarily use, it is better that what .Net gives me. And it apparently works flawlessly on mac.
- krageon 8y agoEvery good desktop environment (even the tiling ones like i3) supports tray icons. It has nothing to do with the distro you are using.
- roryisok 8y agoI'm going to try your app, despite my post, because I also believe in giving things a chance and leaving my mind open to change.
- cageface 8y agoI’m a very happy user of swinsian on the Mac. https://swinsian.com/ https://swinsian.com/ Between that and xld I don’t feel like I’m missing foobar too much.