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As a developer I completely understand the appeal of Electron. I love web technologies and targeting 3 platforms at once is amazing. As a user, I simply won’t

As a developer I completely understand the appeal of Electron. I love web technologies and targeting 3 platforms at once is amazing. As a user, I simply won’t accept it. Platform integration is suboptimal at best and resource usage is preposterous. If this is the future of desktop software, and it seems like it is, we have got to find a better solution. There has to be a way to share the rendering engine and Node process among the many Electron apps that are proliferating on the user’s machine.

benbristow 8y ago
Don't use it then, simple.
- tambourine_man 8y ago
  I don’t, but I’m worried over the course we are taking as an industry.
yoz-y 8y ago
Would sharing help a lot though? DOM will still eat up a ton of memory and windows are each using a separate process. I have not done this for a while but a year or so ago communicating between two windows in an Electron application was insane.
- tambourine_man 8y ago
  It’s not ideal, but it should help. I don't think the processes need to communicate though.
onion2k 8y ago
There has to be a way to share the rendering engine and Node process among the many Electron apps that are proliferating on the user’s machine. I prefer it when one app crashes it doesn't kill a bunch of others.
- tambourine_man 8y ago
  Does a tab necessarily bring the whole browser down when it crashes?
  - onion2k 8y ago
    Tabs are separate processes. Back when they weren't a tab could, and often did, crash the whole browser.
    - tambourine_man 8y ago
      Sure. And why couldn't they share the engine while being separate processes? It's the current browser model we have right now.
jbergens 8y ago
The rendering engine in Windows is accessible. It has not been as advanced as V8 but it is getting better and that means you can, or will soon be able to, create an app with html+css+js and run it on Windows without downloading a full engine. For the more common solutions I think computers already have enough memory to handle this. The boot time is a bit too long but if each app uses 200-300 MB does not mean _that_ much when the computers have 8 GB or more.
- tambourine_man 8y ago
  V8 is the JavaScript engine, blink is the rendering one. But yeah, that’s the idea. Have you tried using 3 Electron apps simultaneously on 8GB machine?
  - roryisok 8y ago
    > Have you tried using 3 Electron apps simultaneously on 8GB machine? I have done this, and it worked fine. In fact, I had three instances of vscode, slack, gitkraken, Spotify and headset all running concurrently on a windows machine and it didn't melt. I'm tired of this myth that electron takes 1gb per app
    - tambourine_man 8y ago
      That's a freshly launched, Electron flavored, Skype instance. https://imgur.com/FmKZhTZ https://imgur.com/FmKZhTZ I rest my case.
      - roryisok 8y ago
        Yup, that's 1gb alright
        tambourine_man 8y ago
        It's over half a GB for freshly opened messages app. Give it a full day and I'm sure it won't let you down. Compare that to the previous native version: https://imgur.com/u1xL3Eg https://imgur.com/u1xL3Eg But if you think a 5X RAM usage increase is fine I really have nothing to add.

benbristow 8y ago

Don't use it then, simple.

tambourine_man 8y ago
I don’t, but I’m worried over the course we are taking as an industry.

yoz-y 8y ago

Would sharing help a lot though? DOM will still eat up a ton of memory and windows are each using a separate process. I have not done this for a while but a year or so ago communicating between two windows in an Electron application was insane.

tambourine_man 8y ago
It’s not ideal, but it should help. I don't think the processes need to communicate though.

onion2k 8y ago

There has to be a way to share the rendering engine and Node process among the many Electron apps that are proliferating on the user’s machine. I prefer it when one app crashes it doesn't kill a bunch of others.

tambourine_man 8y ago
Does a tab necessarily bring the whole browser down when it crashes?
- onion2k 8y ago
  Tabs are separate processes. Back when they weren't a tab could, and often did, crash the whole browser.
  - tambourine_man 8y ago
    Sure. And why couldn't they share the engine while being separate processes? It's the current browser model we have right now.

jbergens 8y ago

The rendering engine in Windows is accessible. It has not been as advanced as V8 but it is getting better and that means you can, or will soon be able to, create an app with html+css+js and run it on Windows without downloading a full engine. For the more common solutions I think computers already have enough memory to handle this. The boot time is a bit too long but if each app uses 200-300 MB does not mean _that_ much when the computers have 8 GB or more.

tambourine_man 8y ago
V8 is the JavaScript engine, blink is the rendering one. But yeah, that’s the idea. Have you tried using 3 Electron apps simultaneously on 8GB machine?
- roryisok 8y ago
  > Have you tried using 3 Electron apps simultaneously on 8GB machine? I have done this, and it worked fine. In fact, I had three instances of vscode, slack, gitkraken, Spotify and headset all running concurrently on a windows machine and it didn't melt. I'm tired of this myth that electron takes 1gb per app
  - tambourine_man 8y ago
    That's a freshly launched, Electron flavored, Skype instance. https://imgur.com/FmKZhTZ https://imgur.com/FmKZhTZ I rest my case.
    - roryisok 8y ago
      Yup, that's 1gb alright
      - tambourine_man 8y ago
        It's over half a GB for freshly opened messages app. Give it a full day and I'm sure it won't let you down. Compare that to the previous native version: https://imgur.com/u1xL3Eg https://imgur.com/u1xL3Eg But if you think a 5X RAM usage increase is fine I really have nothing to add.