7 ms·

Out of curiosity, why do you prefer a native app over an electron app?

sixstringtheory 6y ago
Other commenters are rightfully pointing out the continued performance issues, but just as important for me is the platform citizenship of electron apps. The glut of new ones I use for work on macOS: VSCode, Slack, Notion and Height all have different keybindings than any other apps, some completely disable command+? which I use to find/learn commands for operations I don’t already know. Some just don’t use the menu bar at all. Layout is awful in them, like slack threads being a sliver of the right side of the window, or notion’s usable area maxing out at 800 pixels, or height’s window being fixed to a minimum of 800. Some don’t respect auto dark/light mode. Notion has completely upended many tried and true patterns from word processing. Links take you to the browser based version instead of deep linking to the app. Of course there are some things I do like about each app, but for me they aren’t worth the tradeoff for the ramp up time on a new product coupled with the annoyances I encounter when using these new apps. I can get things done just fine in a github repo full of markdown, or apple notes, or email, or Xcode, or textedit or sublime text, and on and on. Not to forget the venerable command line. I think the one web app I legitimately enjoy using is trello.
AnonC 6y ago
Not GP, but Electron apps to me have a specific “smell”. When you run one, you get to know it’s an Electron app without prior knowledge of that fact. Slow launches, massive memory usage that initiates thrashing, standard OS keyboard bindings not working, actions within the app being sluggish (especially if this is not the only app running and there are other apps using some RAM), and sometimes several crashes too. I know that there are some Electron apps that behave well and perform well (responsiveness and RAM usage), but those are in the minority. One could always run a bloated Electron app as the only foreground app on the system and give it more resources, but the usability compromises are hard to get over if you’re someone who likes learning and using keyboard shortcuts and other OS specific interactions.
favorited 6y ago
I don't think this has been mentioned yet, but dark mode on a Mac is very adaptive, and has lots of material which adjusts to the color of your desktop. Compare these 3 screenshots of the same window (https://imgur.com/a/UNXtweJ https://imgur.com/a/UNXtweJ) - and that's not a translucent or blurred window, it's just a solid background color. The only change I made between taking those was picking a different desktop image. When I open Slack, it doesn't match any of the native apps because it doesn't use the native color blending. It's just drawing a different palette of colors. In this case, I don't know if QT is going to be any better if it is just drawing all of its own controls. There's another native Git client that I use, and it looks amazing and blends right in with the rest of the apps I use everyday.
ryukafalz 6y ago
For me, something being an electron app isn't the worst thing in the world. What is problematic is the JavaScript ecosystem. I use and occasionally contribute to a distro that's very strict about all dependencies of an application also being packaged in the distro. That's just infeasible for most JavaScript apps these days; most that I've seen have on the order of 500-1000 dependencies.
vb6sp6 6y ago
I do not have unlimited ram
mehrdadn 6y ago
Dunno about the parent, but for me it's like getting a big, fat, ugly truck to drive to the grocery store every week.
- rumanator 6y ago
  There's electron, and there's electron-type apps. Vscode is pretty snappy and relatively light to the point it's not prohibitively expensive to run it, for example.
  - wdb 6y ago
    Main problem I have is that it keeps using 100% CPU on my Mac most of the times which doesn't make it easy to run Docker/K3s alongside
  - robenkleene 6y ago
    I always see Visual Studio Code trotted out as an example of a relatively fast Electron app. I do use Visual Studio Code (for complicated reasons), but if I were to describe it to someone, the first thing I'd mention is that opening a new window (i.e., the `⇧⌘N` shortcut) is incredibly slow. For this action, it's easily the slowest of any application I use regularly, I can count to three before the window appears, a normal application is ready for input practically instantaneously.
  - mehrdadn 6y ago
    VSCode makes me want to tear my eyes out.
  - dschuessler 6y ago
    I use a 2013 MacBook Air and while I really like Vscode for its features, UI responses are constantly lagging. Native apps feel like they react an order of magnitude faster. It's ok, but "snappy" really is the last description I would think of when using Vscode.
  - bovermyer 6y ago
    VSCode is the fastest Electron app, so it's fair to use it for comparison to native apps. It's slow compared to Sublime Text 3, which is probably the closest alternative. And compared to vim, VSCode is positively glacial.
rumanator 6y ago
I don't understand how this sort of question gets pummeled with downvotes. Having developed Qt and XAML applications, I have to say that the DOM approach makes a lot more sense than wrestling loosely bundles of widgets. In the end Qt apps end up with a widget tree, but the path that they take to get there is convoluted and packed with unnecessary fusion of UI responsibilities and data and even business logic.
- mehrdadn 6y ago
  I don't think end users decide which GUIs they like based on their "DOM approach" any more than they decide what milk they like based on the milking approach.
  - rumanator 6y ago
    I'm pretty sure that users like good software with pretty GUIs that are easy to use and navigate around and extend. DOM-based frameworks make this sort of stuff trivially to implement, and some of them evem come with gesture and animation support out-of-the-box. Meanwhile, feel free to take a look at Guitar's source tree to figure out if that is trivial to work with, and at best it looks like an app from 1998.
    - ubercow13 6y ago
      Plenty of people seem to not use Electron apps despite their sometimes superior UX, because the inherent problems with it are so off putting that the improved functionality doesn’t make up for them. That said, if superfluous animations are a big part of the benefit, you can count me out in any case.
    - inetknght 6y ago
      > I'm pretty sure that users like good software with pretty GUIs that are easy to use and navigate around and extend. I don't know about other users, but I like good software with functional UIs that are easy to automate and extend. In my experience, that's definitely _not_ Electron-based UIs. It's also not most GUIs either for that matter. I absolutely do _not_ want "gesture" and "animation" support. Gestures are a hack for a shitty touch-screen input with zero tactile feedback. Animation is just a power hog for, like you said, a pretty interface. I don't want a pretty interface if it costs performance, costs battery, costs usability.
Yetanfou 6y ago
To put your question in a footwear-oriented perspective: Out of curiousity, why do you prefer shoes made of nylon or leather over those made of lead?

Other commenters are rightfully pointing out the continued performance issues, but just as important for me is the platform citizenship of electron apps. The glut of new ones I use for work on macOS: VSCode, Slack, Notion and Height all have different keybindings than any other apps, some completely disable command+? which I use to find/learn commands for operations I don’t already know. Some just don’t use the menu bar at all. Layout is awful in them, like slack threads being a sliver of the right side of the window, or notion’s usable area maxing out at 800 pixels, or height’s window being fixed to a minimum of 800. Some don’t respect auto dark/light mode. Notion has completely upended many tried and true patterns from word processing. Links take you to the browser based version instead of deep linking to the app. Of course there are some things I do like about each app, but for me they aren’t worth the tradeoff for the ramp up time on a new product coupled with the annoyances I encounter when using these new apps. I can get things done just fine in a github repo full of markdown, or apple notes, or email, or Xcode, or textedit or sublime text, and on and on. Not to forget the venerable command line. I think the one web app I legitimately enjoy using is trello.

AnonC 6y ago

Not GP, but Electron apps to me have a specific “smell”. When you run one, you get to know it’s an Electron app without prior knowledge of that fact. Slow launches, massive memory usage that initiates thrashing, standard OS keyboard bindings not working, actions within the app being sluggish (especially if this is not the only app running and there are other apps using some RAM), and sometimes several crashes too. I know that there are some Electron apps that behave well and perform well (responsiveness and RAM usage), but those are in the minority. One could always run a bloated Electron app as the only foreground app on the system and give it more resources, but the usability compromises are hard to get over if you’re someone who likes learning and using keyboard shortcuts and other OS specific interactions.

favorited 6y ago

I don't think this has been mentioned yet, but dark mode on a Mac is very adaptive, and has lots of material which adjusts to the color of your desktop. Compare these 3 screenshots of the same window (https://imgur.com/a/UNXtweJ https://imgur.com/a/UNXtweJ) - and that's not a translucent or blurred window, it's just a solid background color. The only change I made between taking those was picking a different desktop image. When I open Slack, it doesn't match any of the native apps because it doesn't use the native color blending. It's just drawing a different palette of colors. In this case, I don't know if QT is going to be any better if it is just drawing all of its own controls. There's another native Git client that I use, and it looks amazing and blends right in with the rest of the apps I use everyday.

ryukafalz 6y ago

For me, something being an electron app isn't the worst thing in the world. What is problematic is the JavaScript ecosystem. I use and occasionally contribute to a distro that's very strict about all dependencies of an application also being packaged in the distro. That's just infeasible for most JavaScript apps these days; most that I've seen have on the order of 500-1000 dependencies.

vb6sp6 6y ago

I do not have unlimited ram

mehrdadn 6y ago

Dunno about the parent, but for me it's like getting a big, fat, ugly truck to drive to the grocery store every week.

rumanator 6y ago
There's electron, and there's electron-type apps. Vscode is pretty snappy and relatively light to the point it's not prohibitively expensive to run it, for example.
- wdb 6y ago
  Main problem I have is that it keeps using 100% CPU on my Mac most of the times which doesn't make it easy to run Docker/K3s alongside
- robenkleene 6y ago
  I always see Visual Studio Code trotted out as an example of a relatively fast Electron app. I do use Visual Studio Code (for complicated reasons), but if I were to describe it to someone, the first thing I'd mention is that opening a new window (i.e., the `⇧⌘N` shortcut) is incredibly slow. For this action, it's easily the slowest of any application I use regularly, I can count to three before the window appears, a normal application is ready for input practically instantaneously.
- mehrdadn 6y ago
  VSCode makes me want to tear my eyes out.
- dschuessler 6y ago
  I use a 2013 MacBook Air and while I really like Vscode for its features, UI responses are constantly lagging. Native apps feel like they react an order of magnitude faster. It's ok, but "snappy" really is the last description I would think of when using Vscode.
- bovermyer 6y ago
  VSCode is the fastest Electron app, so it's fair to use it for comparison to native apps. It's slow compared to Sublime Text 3, which is probably the closest alternative. And compared to vim, VSCode is positively glacial.

rumanator 6y ago

I don't understand how this sort of question gets pummeled with downvotes. Having developed Qt and XAML applications, I have to say that the DOM approach makes a lot more sense than wrestling loosely bundles of widgets. In the end Qt apps end up with a widget tree, but the path that they take to get there is convoluted and packed with unnecessary fusion of UI responsibilities and data and even business logic.

mehrdadn 6y ago
I don't think end users decide which GUIs they like based on their "DOM approach" any more than they decide what milk they like based on the milking approach.
- rumanator 6y ago
  I'm pretty sure that users like good software with pretty GUIs that are easy to use and navigate around and extend. DOM-based frameworks make this sort of stuff trivially to implement, and some of them evem come with gesture and animation support out-of-the-box. Meanwhile, feel free to take a look at Guitar's source tree to figure out if that is trivial to work with, and at best it looks like an app from 1998.
  - ubercow13 6y ago
    Plenty of people seem to not use Electron apps despite their sometimes superior UX, because the inherent problems with it are so off putting that the improved functionality doesn’t make up for them. That said, if superfluous animations are a big part of the benefit, you can count me out in any case.
  - inetknght 6y ago
    > I'm pretty sure that users like good software with pretty GUIs that are easy to use and navigate around and extend. I don't know about other users, but I like good software with functional UIs that are easy to automate and extend. In my experience, that's definitely _not_ Electron-based UIs. It's also not most GUIs either for that matter. I absolutely do _not_ want "gesture" and "animation" support. Gestures are a hack for a shitty touch-screen input with zero tactile feedback. Animation is just a power hog for, like you said, a pretty interface. I don't want a pretty interface if it costs performance, costs battery, costs usability.

Yetanfou 6y ago

To put your question in a footwear-oriented perspective: Out of curiousity, why do you prefer shoes made of nylon or leather over those made of lead?