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Is there a packaging option for Electron where I can point it to a bunch of html files, and I get a 1MB installer, capable of dowloading and installing the runt

Is there a packaging option for Electron where I can point it to a bunch of html files, and I get a 1MB installer, capable of dowloading and installing the runtime on the target system, if not already present? It seems like such an obvious solution used by all languages that require a runtime.

cjbprime 8y ago
Electron's API stability isn't awesome, so in practice I think you'd tie html bundles to runtime versions, and just end up with an awful lot of globally installed Electron runtimes on your system.
ljm 8y ago
There was an attempt with electrino [0] that has ultimately been abandoned (I'm sure the author has posted their story here before). It aimed to provide an electron compatible API over the native browser controls, which is definitely ideal but not so much for those who just want to write for Chrome and nothing else. I think native app development might have a fair chance if it could adapt to some of the decisions the web dev community (and communities using server-side languages) have made over the years. - There was a fairly universal rejection of WYSIWYG editors after the Frontpage/Dreamweaver era, once CSS2 and XHTML started to become a thing; yet your default option for building a Mac or Windows app is to download around 6GB worth of IDE, interface builders, and other toolkits you'll never even know you'll need before you can properly get started. - While you might consider a webpack or babel setup to have appropriated the position, you don't require the solution or project file those editors build to get a hello world up and running by hand. An index.html and an app.js is enough to deploy an entire application. - hot code reloading and debugging in the UI is a breeze (react native and flutter have been great for this too); no need to manually rebuild on each change. This comes at the cost of dealing with the usual web-dev bugbears, ones that don't exist when you're working in C# or Obj-C or Swift or whatever, but the browser has almost accidentally become this amazing environment for experimental app development, that I imagine in some ways takes what Smalltalk had to offer in a totally different direction. It would be interesting to see what OS vendors could do to level the playing field there. I enjoy doing native app development a lot but I do miss some of what you get from working with JS and React. [0] https://github.com/pojala/electrino https://github.com/pojala/electrino
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Dreamweaver is pretty much alive. https://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver.html https://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver.html And it has Animate (nee Flash) and Spark as companions. https://www.adobe.com/products/animate.html https://www.adobe.com/products/animate.html https://www.adobe.com/products/spark.html https://www.adobe.com/products/spark.html All of them also weight as much GB as most IDEs and yet not as easy as something like Winforms or Delphi for the complete experience. Regarding levelling the playing field, UWP supports WebApps and PWA apps delivered via the store have access to UWP APIs, no need to have Electron around.
smaddock 8y ago
There's some discussion about this in the Electron GitHub issues, but development is fairly inactive afaik. https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/673 https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/673

cjbprime 8y ago

Electron's API stability isn't awesome, so in practice I think you'd tie html bundles to runtime versions, and just end up with an awful lot of globally installed Electron runtimes on your system.

ljm 8y ago

There was an attempt with electrino [0] that has ultimately been abandoned (I'm sure the author has posted their story here before). It aimed to provide an electron compatible API over the native browser controls, which is definitely ideal but not so much for those who just want to write for Chrome and nothing else. I think native app development might have a fair chance if it could adapt to some of the decisions the web dev community (and communities using server-side languages) have made over the years. - There was a fairly universal rejection of WYSIWYG editors after the Frontpage/Dreamweaver era, once CSS2 and XHTML started to become a thing; yet your default option for building a Mac or Windows app is to download around 6GB worth of IDE, interface builders, and other toolkits you'll never even know you'll need before you can properly get started. - While you might consider a webpack or babel setup to have appropriated the position, you don't require the solution or project file those editors build to get a hello world up and running by hand. An index.html and an app.js is enough to deploy an entire application. - hot code reloading and debugging in the UI is a breeze (react native and flutter have been great for this too); no need to manually rebuild on each change. This comes at the cost of dealing with the usual web-dev bugbears, ones that don't exist when you're working in C# or Obj-C or Swift or whatever, but the browser has almost accidentally become this amazing environment for experimental app development, that I imagine in some ways takes what Smalltalk had to offer in a totally different direction. It would be interesting to see what OS vendors could do to level the playing field there. I enjoy doing native app development a lot but I do miss some of what you get from working with JS and React. [0] https://github.com/pojala/electrino https://github.com/pojala/electrino

pjmlp 8y ago
Dreamweaver is pretty much alive. https://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver.html https://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver.html And it has Animate (nee Flash) and Spark as companions. https://www.adobe.com/products/animate.html https://www.adobe.com/products/animate.html https://www.adobe.com/products/spark.html https://www.adobe.com/products/spark.html All of them also weight as much GB as most IDEs and yet not as easy as something like Winforms or Delphi for the complete experience. Regarding levelling the playing field, UWP supports WebApps and PWA apps delivered via the store have access to UWP APIs, no need to have Electron around.

smaddock 8y ago

There's some discussion about this in the Electron GitHub issues, but development is fairly inactive afaik. https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/673 https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/673