5 ms·

For me, and probably others, the main issue with Electron isn't the speed or even resource usage. It's that it ignores common UX/UI conventions you expect from

by dewey 7y ago

For me, and probably others, the main issue with Electron isn't the speed or even resource usage. It's that it ignores common UX/UI conventions you expect from a native app which still makes me prefer native macOS apps.

rolleiflex 7y ago
I agree with this. Unfortunately that’s a designer bottleneck rather than anything else. Think of it this way, if somebody ends up with a mess of an Electron app, he or she probably wouldn’t have fared any better in usability with a native app even if the UI would look superficially ‘in-spec’. Edit: Also as an example, Aether comes with plenty of shortcuts, or even has proper tabbing and tab highlighting for low-vision users. Electron prevents none of these, in fact the platform it’s based on, the DOM, is one of the most accessible platforms ever made in terms of support. Whether people actually make use of it it is another matter.
- dewey 7y ago
  I wouldn't necessarily say it's just the way it looks, it's also how things work that you get for "free" when you use the native UI toolkit. Examples would be shortcuts, tabbing through form fields, how a file explorer works and other small things. The file explorer in VSCode for example doesn't really behave like a native one, you have to manually refresh, you can't easily drag and drop and everything just feels a bit off.
  - httpsterio 7y ago
    Just last week I added shortcuts to our MacOS and Windows Electron app in about 15 minutes. I didn't read any documentation and I'm not even a developer, just a designer. I can barely make a proper if loop in js and I can't tell the difference between a method and a function either. Electron is sooo simple. I mean, we've run into some pretty interesting issues like with hardware acceleration and difference in color and font rendering between platforms, but if a guy like me can code, sign and ship a fully functional application, anyone can. Also, I can really recommend Vue and Quasar for anyone looking at building electron and mobile apps. Really fun!
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      There’s a lot more to getting an app to feel native than just shortcuts, unfortunately. A native platform toolkit will do the right thing for your platform, sometimes even if you don’t know what the right thing is or that it exists.
      - recklessplayer 7y ago
        I completely agree with this. As a blind screen reader user, Electron apps are 90% inaccessible to me and other screen reader users. Screen readers (on any platform) interact with the underlying libraries/ frameworks. Every operating system supports its own native toolkit. It's a shame that Java's SWT framework fell out of favor for cross-platform software. That is quite accessible. Unfortunately, blind screen reader users are overlooked when it comes to these types of underlying frameworks.
crispinb 7y ago
That would have been me 18 months ago. But since dropping macOS I've become indifferent to platform conventions. I will never become hostage to a single platform again. Which (admittedly by a very different route) puts me more in touch with ordinary users, who for the most part don't care or notice.
m_fayer 7y ago
I think this peaked some time around 2015. Back then, I remember many developers getting up in arms about following Apple's guidelines to a T, or insisting that Android apps look like a hyperactive stack of colorful paper cutouts under a direct light. Since then, I think many of us have gotten tired of looking at overdesigned sameness that by now we all know will age quickly. Programmers no longer see the sense in chasing a perpetually changing visual standard for no reason other than "BigCo said so". Most importantly though, BigCos in question have fallen out of our good graces, and the "Design Systems" they keep pushing are now regarded as nothing but cynical branding exercises that come at the cost of UX.
- pookeh 7y ago
  You are right but at the same time I am willing to bet you 5 years later someone else will make the opposite argument and be upvoted the same. It's a pendulum.
  - m_fayer 7y ago
    Maybe in 5 years one or two of those BigCos will be humbled by an upstart, or the state, or the market, or a previously humbled BigCo (cough Microsoft). Then, by necessity, their design systems will become once again driven by the needs of actual users and developers. That's the underlying pendulum.
  - nicoburns 7y ago
    I'd bet on the next UI standard being a cross-platform library. Electron-like, but with much more efficient stack, and with binding to multiple languages.
    - m_fayer 7y ago
      I'd bet on "if you can't beat em', join em". Reactive component-based architectures a la React/Vue have won. The DOM has won for the view layer too. And with wasm, you get your bindings to multiple languages. See: Blazor (it's just the first, more are coming). As for desktop apps that could benefit from proper concurrency, lack of a browser sandbox, full system access, etc. - server side Blazor is quietly pioneering a weird new paradigm - essentially running a headless browser in a regular process with full privileges, and then only doing vdom diffing inside the browser.
fsloth 7y ago
Personally I'm fine with application specific UI schemes. It's a bit silly every application would follow the same guidelines as applications are intended to do different things. Platform UX/UI conventions place too strict limitations on innovation. The original point - that people would get confused from non-platform UI schemes - has been proven kind of moot since most games have their own domain specific UI schemes and people love them anyway.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  > It's a bit silly every application would follow the same guidelines as applications are intended to do different things. Platform UX/UI conventions place too strict limitations on innovation. They really don’t. Have you taken a look at the thriving ecosystem of native, powerful macOS apps that follow platform conventions?
  - jcelerier 7y ago
    Most apps that I know people use in MacOS are really not native-controls based - Ableton Live, Max/MSP, VDMX, Resolume, Mathematica, JetBrains IDEs, VSCode, Sublime Text...
    - pfranz 7y ago
      I'm pretty sure the parent was talking about macOS exclusive apps. The ones I recognize there are all multi-platform, which have always had the problem of keeping their own conventions between platform or adopting the platforms--most chose to keep their app consistent platform-to-platform. I also think "professional" apps are a special case (which is a totally subjective classification). Even Apple and Microsoft have done their own thing for professional apps since forever. If I'm going to use that app for 8hrs every day, I'm more accepting of learning something new. I'm still more likely going to pick up an app if it follows existing conventions...I already chose my OS because I've learned and like those conventions.
      - saagarjha 7y ago
marmada 7y ago
To be honest, native MacOS UI doesn't even look good compared to the great styling you can get with HTML/CSS.
- dewey 7y ago
  Native UI toolkits are not necessarily about looking beautiful for every app, they are about consistency, accessibility and letting the user expect how certain things work and can be found at. They have to fit to a lot of constrains that a single app doesn't have to. Yes grey text on a white background can look great on a retina screen, but does it look good across the product range from the last 7 years and all devices, lighting conditions and for people with various disabilities?
jimnotgym 7y ago
I'm intrigued by this. How do you cope with the www? I use web apps so often that Electron looks natural
Vinnl 7y ago
Really, that's not an issue with Electron, I think. You can perfectly well make use of a common platform toolkit and still make a completely counter-intuitive UI - and people did that, a lot. In the end, the important things are things like that the cancel button is on the left and the button to confirm is on the right (depending on your platform), not whether it's grey or blue. And I'd even argue that, with the freedom Electron gives you, app developers have started to actually pay attention to their design, rather than just using the standard toolkit and considering it done - so Electron apps often have better UI. I'd take VSCode's UI over Geany's any time, for example.

by dewey 7y ago

rolleiflex 7y ago

I agree with this. Unfortunately that’s a designer bottleneck rather than anything else. Think of it this way, if somebody ends up with a mess of an Electron app, he or she probably wouldn’t have fared any better in usability with a native app even if the UI would look superficially ‘in-spec’. Edit: Also as an example, Aether comes with plenty of shortcuts, or even has proper tabbing and tab highlighting for low-vision users. Electron prevents none of these, in fact the platform it’s based on, the DOM, is one of the most accessible platforms ever made in terms of support. Whether people actually make use of it it is another matter.

dewey 7y ago
I wouldn't necessarily say it's just the way it looks, it's also how things work that you get for "free" when you use the native UI toolkit. Examples would be shortcuts, tabbing through form fields, how a file explorer works and other small things. The file explorer in VSCode for example doesn't really behave like a native one, you have to manually refresh, you can't easily drag and drop and everything just feels a bit off.
- httpsterio 7y ago
  Just last week I added shortcuts to our MacOS and Windows Electron app in about 15 minutes. I didn't read any documentation and I'm not even a developer, just a designer. I can barely make a proper if loop in js and I can't tell the difference between a method and a function either. Electron is sooo simple. I mean, we've run into some pretty interesting issues like with hardware acceleration and difference in color and font rendering between platforms, but if a guy like me can code, sign and ship a fully functional application, anyone can. Also, I can really recommend Vue and Quasar for anyone looking at building electron and mobile apps. Really fun!
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    There’s a lot more to getting an app to feel native than just shortcuts, unfortunately. A native platform toolkit will do the right thing for your platform, sometimes even if you don’t know what the right thing is or that it exists.
    - recklessplayer 7y ago
      I completely agree with this. As a blind screen reader user, Electron apps are 90% inaccessible to me and other screen reader users. Screen readers (on any platform) interact with the underlying libraries/ frameworks. Every operating system supports its own native toolkit. It's a shame that Java's SWT framework fell out of favor for cross-platform software. That is quite accessible. Unfortunately, blind screen reader users are overlooked when it comes to these types of underlying frameworks.

crispinb 7y ago

That would have been me 18 months ago. But since dropping macOS I've become indifferent to platform conventions. I will never become hostage to a single platform again. Which (admittedly by a very different route) puts me more in touch with ordinary users, who for the most part don't care or notice.

m_fayer 7y ago

I think this peaked some time around 2015. Back then, I remember many developers getting up in arms about following Apple's guidelines to a T, or insisting that Android apps look like a hyperactive stack of colorful paper cutouts under a direct light. Since then, I think many of us have gotten tired of looking at overdesigned sameness that by now we all know will age quickly. Programmers no longer see the sense in chasing a perpetually changing visual standard for no reason other than "BigCo said so". Most importantly though, BigCos in question have fallen out of our good graces, and the "Design Systems" they keep pushing are now regarded as nothing but cynical branding exercises that come at the cost of UX.

pookeh 7y ago
You are right but at the same time I am willing to bet you 5 years later someone else will make the opposite argument and be upvoted the same. It's a pendulum.
- m_fayer 7y ago
  Maybe in 5 years one or two of those BigCos will be humbled by an upstart, or the state, or the market, or a previously humbled BigCo (cough Microsoft). Then, by necessity, their design systems will become once again driven by the needs of actual users and developers. That's the underlying pendulum.
- nicoburns 7y ago
  I'd bet on the next UI standard being a cross-platform library. Electron-like, but with much more efficient stack, and with binding to multiple languages.
  - m_fayer 7y ago
    I'd bet on "if you can't beat em', join em". Reactive component-based architectures a la React/Vue have won. The DOM has won for the view layer too. And with wasm, you get your bindings to multiple languages. See: Blazor (it's just the first, more are coming). As for desktop apps that could benefit from proper concurrency, lack of a browser sandbox, full system access, etc. - server side Blazor is quietly pioneering a weird new paradigm - essentially running a headless browser in a regular process with full privileges, and then only doing vdom diffing inside the browser.

fsloth 7y ago

Personally I'm fine with application specific UI schemes. It's a bit silly every application would follow the same guidelines as applications are intended to do different things. Platform UX/UI conventions place too strict limitations on innovation. The original point - that people would get confused from non-platform UI schemes - has been proven kind of moot since most games have their own domain specific UI schemes and people love them anyway.

saagarjha 7y ago
> It's a bit silly every application would follow the same guidelines as applications are intended to do different things. Platform UX/UI conventions place too strict limitations on innovation. They really don’t. Have you taken a look at the thriving ecosystem of native, powerful macOS apps that follow platform conventions?
- jcelerier 7y ago
  Most apps that I know people use in MacOS are really not native-controls based - Ableton Live, Max/MSP, VDMX, Resolume, Mathematica, JetBrains IDEs, VSCode, Sublime Text...
  - pfranz 7y ago
    I'm pretty sure the parent was talking about macOS exclusive apps. The ones I recognize there are all multi-platform, which have always had the problem of keeping their own conventions between platform or adopting the platforms--most chose to keep their app consistent platform-to-platform. I also think "professional" apps are a special case (which is a totally subjective classification). Even Apple and Microsoft have done their own thing for professional apps since forever. If I'm going to use that app for 8hrs every day, I'm more accepting of learning something new. I'm still more likely going to pick up an app if it follows existing conventions...I already chose my OS because I've learned and like those conventions.
    - saagarjha 7y ago

marmada 7y ago

To be honest, native MacOS UI doesn't even look good compared to the great styling you can get with HTML/CSS.

dewey 7y ago
Native UI toolkits are not necessarily about looking beautiful for every app, they are about consistency, accessibility and letting the user expect how certain things work and can be found at. They have to fit to a lot of constrains that a single app doesn't have to. Yes grey text on a white background can look great on a retina screen, but does it look good across the product range from the last 7 years and all devices, lighting conditions and for people with various disabilities?

jimnotgym 7y ago

I'm intrigued by this. How do you cope with the www? I use web apps so often that Electron looks natural

Vinnl 7y ago

Really, that's not an issue with Electron, I think. You can perfectly well make use of a common platform toolkit and still make a completely counter-intuitive UI - and people did that, a lot. In the end, the important things are things like that the cancel button is on the left and the button to confirm is on the right (depending on your platform), not whether it's grey or blue. And I'd even argue that, with the freedom Electron gives you, app developers have started to actually pay attention to their design, rather than just using the standard toolkit and considering it done - so Electron apps often have better UI. I'd take VSCode's UI over Geany's any time, for example.