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Before the "We hate Electron" crowd gets here - congrats to all involved on this release: so far it works great, the UX is simple enough for anyone to use, it's

Before the "We hate Electron" crowd gets here - congrats to all involved on this release: so far it works great, the UX is simple enough for anyone to use, it's open source and most importantly - it isn't Zoom. Good enough for me.

xorcist 6y ago
Card carrying member of the unnecessarily complicated stack skeptic's club here, but this is something Electron actually makes sense for. This is one of the few cases where bundling a complete WebRTC stack makes sense, because it's actually being used, and bundling the web browser could potentially make permission management a bit easier which is probably one of the remaining usability problems.
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
  Couldn't they rip-out the WebRTC stack - leaving out the RAM-hungry parts of Electron/Chromium/V8/etc that aren't relevant to desktop applications (e.g. aggressive in-memory caching, process isolation, etc)? As much as we all have strong opinions about Electron, surely someone who is able to make a solidly built "DOM+CSS+JS+Optional extras" version of Electron would be make _bank_ overnight by servicing and consulting for it? I know lots of companies would love a build of Electron with a smaller attack-surface, for example.
  - BiteCode_dev 6y ago
    The WebRTC stack depends on: - the network code - the video and audio playing code - the video and audio capture code - the crypto code Making that generic is a huge task nobody will every do. So since you embed them, why no elso embed the UI code ? I mean, at this point...
    - __s 6y ago
      Not to mention making that generic would want to be accepted upstream in order to have upstream maintain this interface
sfifs 6y ago
I just wonder why an electron like chromium library isn't just provided by default by Windows and Linux. Then it could be updated by the system vs. each app updating individually and be much more secure.
- jimmcslim 6y ago
  The Electron team is tracking an issue for introducing an Electron runtime that is shared between multiple apps... https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/673 https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/673 I suppose one issue is that you have to either be very good with backwards compatibility or at least support having a single instance of multiple different versions of the runtime installed side-by-side (e.g. similar to .NET Core). There is also this.. 'Exploring lighter alternatives to Electron for hosting a Blazor desktop app' [1], which builds upon 'webview' [2]. [1] https://blog.stevensanderson.com/2019/11/01/exploring-lighter-alternatives-to-electron-for-hosting-a-blazor-desktop-app/ https://blog.stevensanderson.com/2019/11/01/exploring-lighte... [2] https://github.com/zserge/webview https://github.com/zserge/webview
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
BiteCode_dev 6y ago
I'm part of the crowd that dislikes the trend to use electron for everything. I have 8gb of soldered Ram on my laptop, and will be forced to buy a new machine because I'm swapping like crazy now. My workflow hasn't changed. My activity hasn't. But 2 years ago, Firefox and Virtualbox were the only hogs, for reasons I could accept. Now, dynalist, stremio, discord, signal, pulsesms and vscode are added to the mix. However, I understand that said apps may have not existed without Electron at all. And especially, for jitsi, I think it makes perfect sense. If you are going to create an app that does video, audio and web rtc, it would be silly not to use a battle tested browser engine that does all this already. Besides, having contemplated the state of UI in a world were you have a bazillions of combination of hardware type + screen format + OS kernel + OS version, I have to say Electron doesn't have much competition. What are you going to do? QT? Phone support is abysmal and it's a pain to package. Kivy? Super slow, almost no widgets. Flutter ? Uses a niche language with a very small ecosystem and an unknown life expectancy. I probably would go with the later, but I can't blame people for taking the easy road.
- wereHamster 6y ago
  I have exactly one electron app (VSCode) that I need for my regular daily work. Everything else I shut down when I don't need it. Then I look at my coworkers who have dozens of apps running at the same time and complaining that their laptop is slow, and I only shake my head…
  - BiteCode_dev 6y ago
    Yeah, why having a multitask OS when you can do the scheduler job manually?
- stephenr 6y ago
  > If you are going to create an app that does video, audio and web rtc, it would be silly not to use a battle tested browser engine that does all this already. I think you mean "create an app that does video, audio USING web rtc". Plenty of native desktop/mobile apps do video/audio/text without embedding a browser.
dang 6y ago
> Before the "We hate Electron" crowd gets here This is one of those comments that has the same effect as its opposite (in this case, changing the subject).

xorcist 6y ago

Card carrying member of the unnecessarily complicated stack skeptic's club here, but this is something Electron actually makes sense for. This is one of the few cases where bundling a complete WebRTC stack makes sense, because it's actually being used, and bundling the web browser could potentially make permission management a bit easier which is probably one of the remaining usability problems.

DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
Couldn't they rip-out the WebRTC stack - leaving out the RAM-hungry parts of Electron/Chromium/V8/etc that aren't relevant to desktop applications (e.g. aggressive in-memory caching, process isolation, etc)? As much as we all have strong opinions about Electron, surely someone who is able to make a solidly built "DOM+CSS+JS+Optional extras" version of Electron would be make _bank_ overnight by servicing and consulting for it? I know lots of companies would love a build of Electron with a smaller attack-surface, for example.
- BiteCode_dev 6y ago
  The WebRTC stack depends on: - the network code - the video and audio playing code - the video and audio capture code - the crypto code Making that generic is a huge task nobody will every do. So since you embed them, why no elso embed the UI code ? I mean, at this point...
  - __s 6y ago
    Not to mention making that generic would want to be accepted upstream in order to have upstream maintain this interface

sfifs 6y ago

I just wonder why an electron like chromium library isn't just provided by default by Windows and Linux. Then it could be updated by the system vs. each app updating individually and be much more secure.

jimmcslim 6y ago
The Electron team is tracking an issue for introducing an Electron runtime that is shared between multiple apps... https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/673 https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/673 I suppose one issue is that you have to either be very good with backwards compatibility or at least support having a single instance of multiple different versions of the runtime installed side-by-side (e.g. similar to .NET Core). There is also this.. 'Exploring lighter alternatives to Electron for hosting a Blazor desktop app' [1], which builds upon 'webview' [2]. [1] https://blog.stevensanderson.com/2019/11/01/exploring-lighter-alternatives-to-electron-for-hosting-a-blazor-desktop-app/ https://blog.stevensanderson.com/2019/11/01/exploring-lighte... [2] https://github.com/zserge/webview https://github.com/zserge/webview
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

BiteCode_dev 6y ago

I'm part of the crowd that dislikes the trend to use electron for everything. I have 8gb of soldered Ram on my laptop, and will be forced to buy a new machine because I'm swapping like crazy now. My workflow hasn't changed. My activity hasn't. But 2 years ago, Firefox and Virtualbox were the only hogs, for reasons I could accept. Now, dynalist, stremio, discord, signal, pulsesms and vscode are added to the mix. However, I understand that said apps may have not existed without Electron at all. And especially, for jitsi, I think it makes perfect sense. If you are going to create an app that does video, audio and web rtc, it would be silly not to use a battle tested browser engine that does all this already. Besides, having contemplated the state of UI in a world were you have a bazillions of combination of hardware type + screen format + OS kernel + OS version, I have to say Electron doesn't have much competition. What are you going to do? QT? Phone support is abysmal and it's a pain to package. Kivy? Super slow, almost no widgets. Flutter ? Uses a niche language with a very small ecosystem and an unknown life expectancy. I probably would go with the later, but I can't blame people for taking the easy road.

wereHamster 6y ago
I have exactly one electron app (VSCode) that I need for my regular daily work. Everything else I shut down when I don't need it. Then I look at my coworkers who have dozens of apps running at the same time and complaining that their laptop is slow, and I only shake my head…
- BiteCode_dev 6y ago
  Yeah, why having a multitask OS when you can do the scheduler job manually?
stephenr 6y ago
> If you are going to create an app that does video, audio and web rtc, it would be silly not to use a battle tested browser engine that does all this already. I think you mean "create an app that does video, audio USING web rtc". Plenty of native desktop/mobile apps do video/audio/text without embedding a browser.

dang 6y ago

> Before the "We hate Electron" crowd gets here This is one of those comments that has the same effect as its opposite (in this case, changing the subject).