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Show HN: Clippy (Clone) – As Electron app: 165mb; as Sciter app: 6mb (not typo)

2 points by GirkovArpa 6y ago

GirkovArpa 6y ago
I thought it would be nice to have a concrete example of the same app made with Electron versus Sciter. So I cloned Clipper (https://github.com/AkashRajpurohit/clipper https://github.com/AkashRajpurohit/clipper) in Sciter to the best of my ability. The original as an Electron app is 165mb. In contrast, the Sciter release is only 6mb (3mb compressed). I used Quark (Sciter's version of electron-builder) to pack the program's resources into a single file, and here is the result: https://github.com/GirkovArpa/clipper-sciter/releases https://github.com/GirkovArpa/clipper-sciter/releases (I've only packaged for Windows at the moment). Actually it didn't pack the .mp3 files for some reason so I just zipped those up with the executable. Not only is the filesize a magnitude of order lighter, but it starts up way faster and without an empty grey window at the beginning. Some caveats: - I haven't copied the button click waves effect from here: https://materializecss.com/waves.html https://materializecss.com/waves.html (yet). - I haven't implemented the tray icon (yet). - Popups which are supposed to be hidden offscreen until activated can be scrolled into view when the list of clipboard history is long enough. I intend to fix this as soon as I can and have posted a question about it in the official Sciter forums here: https://sciter.com/forums/topic/position-absolute-bottom-0-doesnt-update-on-scroll/ https://sciter.com/forums/topic/position-absolute-bottom-0-d... I would like to emphasize that this is my attempt at a clone but it's not a port. Since the original Clippy is written in React, a genuine port would utilize Sciter's "Reactor".
clintonb 6y ago
How does memory usage compare? That is more important to me than executable size.
- GirkovArpa 6y ago
  According to Task Manager, the Electron version has 5 processes for a total 80mb memory. The Sciter version has 1 process for a total 15mb memory. According to Process Hacker, Electron had "Peak Private Bytes" of 522mb. Sciter had 35mb. I am not sure exactly what those numbers refer to, but I hope it answers your question.

2 points by GirkovArpa 6y ago

I thought it would be nice to have a concrete example of the same app made with Electron versus Sciter. So I cloned Clipper (https://github.com/AkashRajpurohit/clipper https://github.com/AkashRajpurohit/clipper) in Sciter to the best of my ability. The original as an Electron app is 165mb. In contrast, the Sciter release is only 6mb (3mb compressed). I used Quark (Sciter's version of electron-builder) to pack the program's resources into a single file, and here is the result: https://github.com/GirkovArpa/clipper-sciter/releases https://github.com/GirkovArpa/clipper-sciter/releases (I've only packaged for Windows at the moment). Actually it didn't pack the .mp3 files for some reason so I just zipped those up with the executable. Not only is the filesize a magnitude of order lighter, but it starts up way faster and without an empty grey window at the beginning. Some caveats: - I haven't copied the button click waves effect from here: https://materializecss.com/waves.html https://materializecss.com/waves.html (yet). - I haven't implemented the tray icon (yet). - Popups which are supposed to be hidden offscreen until activated can be scrolled into view when the list of clipboard history is long enough. I intend to fix this as soon as I can and have posted a question about it in the official Sciter forums here: https://sciter.com/forums/topic/position-absolute-bottom-0-doesnt-update-on-scroll/ https://sciter.com/forums/topic/position-absolute-bottom-0-d... I would like to emphasize that this is my attempt at a clone but it's not a port. Since the original Clippy is written in React, a genuine port would utilize Sciter's "Reactor".

clintonb 6y ago

How does memory usage compare? That is more important to me than executable size.

GirkovArpa 6y ago
According to Task Manager, the Electron version has 5 processes for a total 80mb memory. The Sciter version has 1 process for a total 15mb memory. According to Process Hacker, Electron had "Peak Private Bytes" of 522mb. Sciter had 35mb. I am not sure exactly what those numbers refer to, but I hope it answers your question.