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This reads like someone hired a consulting firm to send out surveys asking why people don't like Electron apps, without really understanding the problem. None

by gok 8y ago

This reads like someone hired a consulting firm to send out surveys asking why people don't like Electron apps, without really understanding the problem. None of the four bullet points actually address real issues. The security problem isn't that Google is bad at security (they're among the best really). The problem is that Javascript code is generally written with the expectation that it will run in a web browser's highly locked down security context. Performance is really the same issue: web apps are authored wastefully. For use cases where you visit a web page for a few minutes then leave that's fine, but when you then let that code run for hours with no sandbox you will inevitably hit perf issues. Write native apps. If you can't afford that, just make a web page.

izacus 8y ago
Electron also has a lot of hardening features from chromium disabled as is strongly discouraged by Google as unsafe to use for apps.
- smaddock 8y ago
  This seems to be changing as of recently this year. There have been many security-related changes including making options such as Node integration disabled by default [1]. Support for renderer process sandbox is also available [2]. [1] https://github.com/electron/electron/pull/14284 https://github.com/electron/electron/pull/14284 [2] https://electronjs.org/docs/api/sandbox-option https://electronjs.org/docs/api/sandbox-option
LaGrange 8y ago
Almost nobody can afford that, not anymore. If your application can be written in Electron and provide 80% of your features, someone's going to do it and eat your business alive. Especially if they can figure out how to leverage network effects to use their users to drag your committed users away. Unless you have a core feature that _can't_ be implemented in Electron for some reason (I guess you're writing a game or something similar?), or have some other mechanism for locking your users in, writing a native app in 2018 is just putting your employees livelihood at stake. It's not cool or fair at all, sure, but hey, us Marxists were telling you this will always happen for over 150 years now, and y'all still acting surprised.
- jcden 8y ago
  All else being equal, native apps will always be better. Higher performing and longer lifespans. It’s like Winamp; simple, extremely fast, 21 years old and still kicks the shit out of modern music apps. Of course, if you can’t write well in native you shouldn’t.
  - tokyodude 8y ago
    Yea, Winapp totally won the music app wars! Oh, no, Spotify seems to have won and AFAIK it runs in an HTML based UI even in it's "Native" app. No idea if it's electron. So the parent seems correct. Winamp stayed native an lost. Spotify embraced the rapid dev that using a browser host brings to app dev and won.
    - sinni800 8y ago
      Winamp won far before Spotify was even a contender. It won in another time. Spotify is winning mostly because people don't want to spend money for songs anymore and they don't give a damn if they own them. Which is not to say I don't like the practice, it doesn't matter to me.
      - michaelmrose 8y ago
        They frequently didn't spend money for songs to start with they just stream them instead of pirate them which however much people complain about the revenue is certainly more than the zero they got from piracy. The degree to which people didn't want to pay for music was kind of obvious when people needed mp3 players sufficient storage that filling them legally would have required as much money as a down payment on a house.
    - piano 8y ago
      The thing about Electron - and the thing that Electron fanboys either don't realize or don't care - is that with Electron, the company/vendor wins at the expense of users, who have to put up with their "application". No one really likes Elecrton apart from the vendor/developer and the most fanatic fanboys. Everyone else at best doesn't mind Electron. If an Electron "application" is decent, people typically like the features or the online service to which it's tied but its Electron base is something that people more or less tolerate, depending on the degree it irks them. It's just a huge tradeoff, that's all. It reminds me of some Java or Python desktop applications, it's a similar kind of tradeoff. Hopefully it'll pass just like the previous fads.

by gok 8y ago

izacus 8y ago

Electron also has a lot of hardening features from chromium disabled as is strongly discouraged by Google as unsafe to use for apps.

smaddock 8y ago
This seems to be changing as of recently this year. There have been many security-related changes including making options such as Node integration disabled by default [1]. Support for renderer process sandbox is also available [2]. [1] https://github.com/electron/electron/pull/14284 https://github.com/electron/electron/pull/14284 [2] https://electronjs.org/docs/api/sandbox-option https://electronjs.org/docs/api/sandbox-option

LaGrange 8y ago

Almost nobody can afford that, not anymore. If your application can be written in Electron and provide 80% of your features, someone's going to do it and eat your business alive. Especially if they can figure out how to leverage network effects to use their users to drag your committed users away. Unless you have a core feature that _can't_ be implemented in Electron for some reason (I guess you're writing a game or something similar?), or have some other mechanism for locking your users in, writing a native app in 2018 is just putting your employees livelihood at stake. It's not cool or fair at all, sure, but hey, us Marxists were telling you this will always happen for over 150 years now, and y'all still acting surprised.

jcden 8y ago
All else being equal, native apps will always be better. Higher performing and longer lifespans. It’s like Winamp; simple, extremely fast, 21 years old and still kicks the shit out of modern music apps. Of course, if you can’t write well in native you shouldn’t.
- tokyodude 8y ago
  Yea, Winapp totally won the music app wars! Oh, no, Spotify seems to have won and AFAIK it runs in an HTML based UI even in it's "Native" app. No idea if it's electron. So the parent seems correct. Winamp stayed native an lost. Spotify embraced the rapid dev that using a browser host brings to app dev and won.
  - sinni800 8y ago
    Winamp won far before Spotify was even a contender. It won in another time. Spotify is winning mostly because people don't want to spend money for songs anymore and they don't give a damn if they own them. Which is not to say I don't like the practice, it doesn't matter to me.
    - michaelmrose 8y ago
      They frequently didn't spend money for songs to start with they just stream them instead of pirate them which however much people complain about the revenue is certainly more than the zero they got from piracy. The degree to which people didn't want to pay for music was kind of obvious when people needed mp3 players sufficient storage that filling them legally would have required as much money as a down payment on a house.
  - piano 8y ago
    The thing about Electron - and the thing that Electron fanboys either don't realize or don't care - is that with Electron, the company/vendor wins at the expense of users, who have to put up with their "application". No one really likes Elecrton apart from the vendor/developer and the most fanatic fanboys. Everyone else at best doesn't mind Electron. If an Electron "application" is decent, people typically like the features or the online service to which it's tied but its Electron base is something that people more or less tolerate, depending on the degree it irks them. It's just a huge tradeoff, that's all. It reminds me of some Java or Python desktop applications, it's a similar kind of tradeoff. Hopefully it'll pass just like the previous fads.