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I kinda don't get why people end up building electron apps to, essentially, "act like it's native". The app looks absolutely awesome, but i would have loved to

I kinda don't get why people end up building electron apps to, essentially, "act like it's native". The app looks absolutely awesome, but i would have loved to just see it run in the browser, I'm kinda reluctant to install yet another memory-hog for basic tasks.

bgdam 8y ago
One important reason people choose to use Electron instead of opening the app in a Browser window, is that the browser blocks a lot of standard keyboard shortcuts. So for example, if you want to capture Ctrl+Tab and move to the next note, based on that, well, you can only do that in Electron. Another UX based reason, is that native menus offer a better UX than having to put buttons for each and every action inside the app. So apart from the usual arguments of cross platform, and we already have JS developers, there are other good reasons to go with Electron. Also, if you want to do something like display a decently advanced HTML view, WKWebkit might or might not cut it. And it get's updated only when the OS itself get's updated (atleast on older versions of OSX). So if that's the kind of thing you want your application to do, then you pretty much have no option other than Electron.
- legostormtroopr 8y ago
  > So for example, if you want to capture Ctrl+Tab So use a different key combo? There are plenty to choose from. I use cloud9 and it uses Crtl+[ and Crtl+] to cycle between tabs.
  - anoncake 8y ago
    Ctrl+Tab is the standard key combo for switching tabs. Not using it is like not using Alt+F4 to close the window.
- krsdcbl 8y ago
  True, these are a few really valid points I wasn't considering
h1d 8y ago
It's easy to "forget" if it's just a tab in a browser even if you bookmark it and gets buried in other 100s. And also easy to close and lose any notifications than running in dock or menu tray.
red_admiral 8y ago
It's the closest you can reasonably get to truly cross-platform, and the buttons on notable very much don't look like "native" on my machine (win10). Yes I know about wxWidgets and so on but you still need to either distribute the runtime with each application separately, or risk "dll hell" if someone wants to run two programs with slightly different versions of some library. Personally I hope some day chrome comes with an "electron runtime" option built in so I only need the framework once on my PC.
- cercatrova 8y ago
  Fuchsia, Google's new OS, has an embedded Chrome option, so it'll act similar to Electron where you only need Chrome once on your computer.
arthulia 8y ago
How would you point it to a data directory on your local machine?
roryisok 8y ago
The main reason you can't do that here is because notes are stored in a local files directory which couldn't be accessed by the browser without using java. Although there author also mentioned using Dropbox so I guess if you trusted it with your credentials it could use the API

bgdam 8y ago

One important reason people choose to use Electron instead of opening the app in a Browser window, is that the browser blocks a lot of standard keyboard shortcuts. So for example, if you want to capture Ctrl+Tab and move to the next note, based on that, well, you can only do that in Electron. Another UX based reason, is that native menus offer a better UX than having to put buttons for each and every action inside the app. So apart from the usual arguments of cross platform, and we already have JS developers, there are other good reasons to go with Electron. Also, if you want to do something like display a decently advanced HTML view, WKWebkit might or might not cut it. And it get's updated only when the OS itself get's updated (atleast on older versions of OSX). So if that's the kind of thing you want your application to do, then you pretty much have no option other than Electron.

legostormtroopr 8y ago
> So for example, if you want to capture Ctrl+Tab So use a different key combo? There are plenty to choose from. I use cloud9 and it uses Crtl+[ and Crtl+] to cycle between tabs.
- anoncake 8y ago
  Ctrl+Tab is the standard key combo for switching tabs. Not using it is like not using Alt+F4 to close the window.
krsdcbl 8y ago
True, these are a few really valid points I wasn't considering

h1d 8y ago

It's easy to "forget" if it's just a tab in a browser even if you bookmark it and gets buried in other 100s. And also easy to close and lose any notifications than running in dock or menu tray.

red_admiral 8y ago

It's the closest you can reasonably get to truly cross-platform, and the buttons on notable very much don't look like "native" on my machine (win10). Yes I know about wxWidgets and so on but you still need to either distribute the runtime with each application separately, or risk "dll hell" if someone wants to run two programs with slightly different versions of some library. Personally I hope some day chrome comes with an "electron runtime" option built in so I only need the framework once on my PC.

cercatrova 8y ago
Fuchsia, Google's new OS, has an embedded Chrome option, so it'll act similar to Electron where you only need Chrome once on your computer.

arthulia 8y ago

How would you point it to a data directory on your local machine?

roryisok 8y ago

The main reason you can't do that here is because notes are stored in a local files directory which couldn't be accessed by the browser without using java. Although there author also mentioned using Dropbox so I guess if you trusted it with your credentials it could use the API