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What's a little confusing for an oldtimer like me is how developing for electron will be different from developing for an OS - don't you make a commitment to a

What's a little confusing for an oldtimer like me is how developing for electron will be different from developing for an OS - don't you make a commitment to a platform that may or may not end up being your best bet? For the consumer it's great, of course, each of the three big OSes basically allow you to run the same stuff and judging by VSCode performance can be okay.

ridiculous_fish 8y ago
Gruber's point is it's not "great." These apps do not feel like Mac apps and do not obey Mac app conventions. Even in VSCode, there is hardly a single interaction that behaves properly. Scrolling, cursor movements, menus, table selection, resizing, drag and drop: they all behave wrong. The more apps like this, the more they erode the UI vocabulary that the Mac has built up.
- mixmastamyk 8y ago
  Are the browsers on the Mac also that bad? What is the difference between say Chrome and Electron?
  - chipotle_coyote 8y ago
    The Ctrl+Cmd+D example works in Chrome and doesn't in an Electron-based IDE I happen to have open now; likewise the right-click menu on selected text works in the former and not the latter. I presume Chrome uses Blink to render UI components within Chrome windows, but in most other respects it behaves like a native macOS app.
  - ridiculous_fish 8y ago
    Mac browsers are much more Mac-like than Electron apps, because they use native Mac APIs for these interactions. For example, Command-Z in Chrome highlights the menu properly because it's handled via the Mac UI frameworks, not intercepted by JS.
  - kitsunesoba 8y ago
    WebKit generally behaves reasonably well on macOS (which makes sense, with WebKit being Apple’s baby). Blink/chrome on the other hand, while behaving better than Gecko has eschewed many Mac specific behaviors, presumably for ease of cross platform development.
- wonthegame 8y ago
  I think it goes further than just eroding expected behaviour. There is a noticeable performance impact when using these Electron based apps. Idling in the background they'll happily drain your battery. Since consumers are using mobile devices more now, battery life is an important consideration. Scroll through text document on any electron app and check the processor usage. It's really surprising that you can get up to 60+% cpu usage.
johnny22 8y ago
The electron API surface is rather small. https://electronjs.org/docs https://electronjs.org/docs Everything else is standard web stuff.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Which is why it should be a plain old web app instead.
  - johnny22 8y ago
    If it can be, it should. I'm only using electron for two reasons. I need access to a serial device, and I need to be able to package my web app to run offline. Most users will only need to install the device shim.

ridiculous_fish 8y ago

Gruber's point is it's not "great." These apps do not feel like Mac apps and do not obey Mac app conventions. Even in VSCode, there is hardly a single interaction that behaves properly. Scrolling, cursor movements, menus, table selection, resizing, drag and drop: they all behave wrong. The more apps like this, the more they erode the UI vocabulary that the Mac has built up.

mixmastamyk 8y ago
Are the browsers on the Mac also that bad? What is the difference between say Chrome and Electron?
- chipotle_coyote 8y ago
  The Ctrl+Cmd+D example works in Chrome and doesn't in an Electron-based IDE I happen to have open now; likewise the right-click menu on selected text works in the former and not the latter. I presume Chrome uses Blink to render UI components within Chrome windows, but in most other respects it behaves like a native macOS app.
- ridiculous_fish 8y ago
  Mac browsers are much more Mac-like than Electron apps, because they use native Mac APIs for these interactions. For example, Command-Z in Chrome highlights the menu properly because it's handled via the Mac UI frameworks, not intercepted by JS.
- kitsunesoba 8y ago
  WebKit generally behaves reasonably well on macOS (which makes sense, with WebKit being Apple’s baby). Blink/chrome on the other hand, while behaving better than Gecko has eschewed many Mac specific behaviors, presumably for ease of cross platform development.
wonthegame 8y ago
I think it goes further than just eroding expected behaviour. There is a noticeable performance impact when using these Electron based apps. Idling in the background they'll happily drain your battery. Since consumers are using mobile devices more now, battery life is an important consideration. Scroll through text document on any electron app and check the processor usage. It's really surprising that you can get up to 60+% cpu usage.

johnny22 8y ago

The electron API surface is rather small. https://electronjs.org/docs https://electronjs.org/docs Everything else is standard web stuff.

pjmlp 8y ago
Which is why it should be a plain old web app instead.
- johnny22 8y ago
  If it can be, it should. I'm only using electron for two reasons. I need access to a serial device, and I need to be able to package my web app to run offline. Most users will only need to install the device shim.