4 ms·

Electron is a full instance of chromium. Running an electron app is essentially running a browser, which is a heavy application. All that heft translates to ine

by ddek 6y ago

Electron is a full instance of chromium. Running an electron app is essentially running a browser, which is a heavy application. All that heft translates to inefficiency.

toastal 6y ago
With options like Firefox's SSB, you can use pages like 'apps' but at use the browser's resource pool instead of spinning up multiple Chromium instances.
- mijoharas 6y ago
  ... but that's not what electron does. Unless I'm missing something that I really don't understand...
  - toastal 6y ago
    It's my understanding that since each app is shipping with its own Electron version/runtime, that the resources of these are not and can't be shared or managed centrally. A chromeless web app running via the browser would effectively be just another tab use the current browser's resources (and extensions +1).
    - mijoharas 6y ago
      Agreed. Sorry, I took your previous comment as arguing against the comment it was in reply to. I was quite keen on chrome apps, as they allowed you to share the chrome browser runtime in a similar way. If you add a native desktop shortcut, and use the chrome-hiding features then you can basically replace electron with a shared runtime. I have a dim memory that it may have been killed/hobbled now though...
filleduchaos 6y ago
As opposed to a "native webview", which is totally not essentially running a browser.
- jabirali 6y ago
  My impression was that running 10 Electron apps would be like having 10 separate installations of Chromium running at the same time (with no shared memory). But running 10 WebView apps would be like having one browser with 10 tabs open, but where a lot of the the browser resources are shared. In that case, I would expect a large difference in memory footprint, although both options would be bad in terms of having a non-native user interface and user experience. Is this incorrect?
- m-p-3 6y ago
  The native webview use another instance of the engine, without running a complete web browser. If all apps did, the amount of resources required would be lower as they would share some common components.

by ddek 6y ago

Electron is a full instance of chromium. Running an electron app is essentially running a browser, which is a heavy application. All that heft translates to inefficiency.

toastal 6y ago

With options like Firefox's SSB, you can use pages like 'apps' but at use the browser's resource pool instead of spinning up multiple Chromium instances.

mijoharas 6y ago
... but that's not what electron does. Unless I'm missing something that I really don't understand...
- toastal 6y ago
  It's my understanding that since each app is shipping with its own Electron version/runtime, that the resources of these are not and can't be shared or managed centrally. A chromeless web app running via the browser would effectively be just another tab use the current browser's resources (and extensions +1).
  - mijoharas 6y ago
    Agreed. Sorry, I took your previous comment as arguing against the comment it was in reply to. I was quite keen on chrome apps, as they allowed you to share the chrome browser runtime in a similar way. If you add a native desktop shortcut, and use the chrome-hiding features then you can basically replace electron with a shared runtime. I have a dim memory that it may have been killed/hobbled now though...

filleduchaos 6y ago

As opposed to a "native webview", which is totally not essentially running a browser.

jabirali 6y ago
My impression was that running 10 Electron apps would be like having 10 separate installations of Chromium running at the same time (with no shared memory). But running 10 WebView apps would be like having one browser with 10 tabs open, but where a lot of the the browser resources are shared. In that case, I would expect a large difference in memory footprint, although both options would be bad in terms of having a non-native user interface and user experience. Is this incorrect?
m-p-3 6y ago
The native webview use another instance of the engine, without running a complete web browser. If all apps did, the amount of resources required would be lower as they would share some common components.