6 ms·

Notion is a great tool and I recommend it as a solid "all-around" personal-wiki / notetaking tool. That being said, the fact that it's electron-based means it'

Notion is a great tool and I recommend it as a solid "all-around" personal-wiki / notetaking tool. That being said, the fact that it's electron-based means it's not always as snappy as I'd like it to be when I want to quickly capture a thought -- sometimes the "page" has to reload, even when I'm using the desktop app. I also notice that like slack, it suffers from the same in-line text formatting woes, which can be infuriating if you're trying to escape out of a code block or something. Still, it's a good tool, and this is a neat feature I'm excited to try.

aidos 6y ago
I find the same. For my workflows the performance gets in the way. I saw another similar tool the other day by the same guys that did Linear (which I love) that looked awesome. If we weren’t deeply embedded with Notion now I’d give it a try. https://www.getoutline.com/ https://www.getoutline.com/
- nsriv 6y ago
  Was curious about Linear, assuming you meant https://linear.app/ https://linear.app/ ?
  - aidos 6y ago
    Indeed. We switched to it a few months back and I couldn’t be happier. The interface is lovely, especially for a power user. Performance is killer. We actually had a call with them about their architecture and borrowed some ideas for our own product.
baron816 6y ago
Always a complaint about Electron on here. Frankly, Notion and it’s ilk would not be nearly has great or feature rich without Electron. It perhaps wouldn’t even exist. Trust, it being an Electron app is a good thing for you, despite its limitations.
- testnew2 6y ago
  You’re absolutely right. If the performance boost afforded by native apps was more important than the feature set provided native would be winning over electron. But it’s not. If you think I’m wrong you should be excited because there is a massive market opportunity for you.
  - jeromenerf 6y ago
    > You’re absolutely right ... If you think I’m wrong ... Is there really a right and wrong yet? There are so many note taking and project management apps, it’s unclear there is yet a dominating leader in usage or tech design. Moreover, native seems to be losing some traction on the desktop, but on mobile?
- tomjen3 6y ago
  You don't get a productivity boost with electron over something like XAML. What you get is the ability to reuse your web code in an app, access a few more APIs and call it "native". Most apps today are so bloody slow they are unworkable. Remember your program absolutely positively have to respond in under 100 milliseconds or won't be perceived as instant and will thus be a hindrance to thought, rather than a benefit to it.
- guessmyname 6y ago
  > Frankly, Notion and it’s ilk would not be nearly has great or feature rich without Electron. It perhaps wouldn’t even exist. Trust, it being an Electron app is a good thing for you, despite its limitations. Google Mail (Gmail) is very successful despite not having an official desktop application, even though Electron and other web wrappers exist. I am confident that Slack, Discord, Messenger, WhatsApp, Notion, among other web applications, would exist without Electron, and the features would be the same. If you are a macOS user and want to have a better experience with hybrid web applications, I highly recommend Fluid [1] or Unite [2]. They both create wrappers for web applications using WebKit, which performs several times better than Chromium on macOS. [1] https://fluidapp.com https://fluidapp.com [2] https://www.bzgapps.com/unite https://www.bzgapps.com/unite
- 6y ago
guessmyname 6y ago
> That being said, the fact that it's electron-based means… At my current job, management jumped into the Notion wagon some time ago, then told IT to force-install the desktop web application in every computer. The moment I realized it was an Electron app, I stopped using it. Nowadays, I sporadically open the web application, which is one click away from my browser bookmarks. Safari executes JavaScript code much faster on my computer than Chromium, so the experience of typing and navigating Notion is much better on the web (native browser) than on the other web (hybrid Electron). The same thing with Slack. It is much more reliable in the native-web than in the hybrid-web/desktop Electron wrapper, which continuously restarts and consumes an unnecessary amount of memory that other more essential applications (Docker, IDE, debugger) could use.
- rattray 6y ago
  That's interesting! Anything special about the computer you're on? Would the apps be just as fast if they used a cocoa web view, or is Safari faster?
  - rattray 6y ago
    Self-answering to some degree, it looks like WKWebView on macos is similar to safari but may be behind on version number (presumably updated only when the OS is updated) and thus slower. You can also embed an actual safari view, but it doesn't let your control things, so it'd have to be more strictly a "dumb shell": https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=trjs0tcd https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=trjs0tcd Of course, I'm not sure how either compares to electron, and I'm sure it depends on the app.
- lancesells 6y ago
  Totally agree. I switched from the Electron app to Safari and everything is much nicer and I use it more. I admittedly don't have the most modern computer but this scrolling through a page of text should not be sluggish and unable to maintain a normal frame rate.
burtonator 6y ago
Electron isn't any slower than any other app. Might use an extra 100MB of RAM but that's like $5... With notion it's probably the app. Not electron's fault. source: me... developer and worked with the Electron platform for 2+ years
- codegladiator 6y ago
  > 100MB of RAM but that's like $5 No one is getting a 100 MB of ram extra for anything. But yeah I don't blame electron here. Have build electron apps and apart from the initial load time everything is mostly under devs control.

aidos 6y ago

I find the same. For my workflows the performance gets in the way. I saw another similar tool the other day by the same guys that did Linear (which I love) that looked awesome. If we weren’t deeply embedded with Notion now I’d give it a try. https://www.getoutline.com/ https://www.getoutline.com/

nsriv 6y ago
Was curious about Linear, assuming you meant https://linear.app/ https://linear.app/ ?
- aidos 6y ago
  Indeed. We switched to it a few months back and I couldn’t be happier. The interface is lovely, especially for a power user. Performance is killer. We actually had a call with them about their architecture and borrowed some ideas for our own product.

baron816 6y ago

Always a complaint about Electron on here. Frankly, Notion and it’s ilk would not be nearly has great or feature rich without Electron. It perhaps wouldn’t even exist. Trust, it being an Electron app is a good thing for you, despite its limitations.

testnew2 6y ago
You’re absolutely right. If the performance boost afforded by native apps was more important than the feature set provided native would be winning over electron. But it’s not. If you think I’m wrong you should be excited because there is a massive market opportunity for you.
- jeromenerf 6y ago
  > You’re absolutely right ... If you think I’m wrong ... Is there really a right and wrong yet? There are so many note taking and project management apps, it’s unclear there is yet a dominating leader in usage or tech design. Moreover, native seems to be losing some traction on the desktop, but on mobile?
tomjen3 6y ago
You don't get a productivity boost with electron over something like XAML. What you get is the ability to reuse your web code in an app, access a few more APIs and call it "native". Most apps today are so bloody slow they are unworkable. Remember your program absolutely positively have to respond in under 100 milliseconds or won't be perceived as instant and will thus be a hindrance to thought, rather than a benefit to it.
guessmyname 6y ago
> Frankly, Notion and it’s ilk would not be nearly has great or feature rich without Electron. It perhaps wouldn’t even exist. Trust, it being an Electron app is a good thing for you, despite its limitations. Google Mail (Gmail) is very successful despite not having an official desktop application, even though Electron and other web wrappers exist. I am confident that Slack, Discord, Messenger, WhatsApp, Notion, among other web applications, would exist without Electron, and the features would be the same. If you are a macOS user and want to have a better experience with hybrid web applications, I highly recommend Fluid [1] or Unite [2]. They both create wrappers for web applications using WebKit, which performs several times better than Chromium on macOS. [1] https://fluidapp.com https://fluidapp.com [2] https://www.bzgapps.com/unite https://www.bzgapps.com/unite
6y ago

guessmyname 6y ago

> That being said, the fact that it's electron-based means… At my current job, management jumped into the Notion wagon some time ago, then told IT to force-install the desktop web application in every computer. The moment I realized it was an Electron app, I stopped using it. Nowadays, I sporadically open the web application, which is one click away from my browser bookmarks. Safari executes JavaScript code much faster on my computer than Chromium, so the experience of typing and navigating Notion is much better on the web (native browser) than on the other web (hybrid Electron). The same thing with Slack. It is much more reliable in the native-web than in the hybrid-web/desktop Electron wrapper, which continuously restarts and consumes an unnecessary amount of memory that other more essential applications (Docker, IDE, debugger) could use.

rattray 6y ago
That's interesting! Anything special about the computer you're on? Would the apps be just as fast if they used a cocoa web view, or is Safari faster?
- rattray 6y ago
  Self-answering to some degree, it looks like WKWebView on macos is similar to safari but may be behind on version number (presumably updated only when the OS is updated) and thus slower. You can also embed an actual safari view, but it doesn't let your control things, so it'd have to be more strictly a "dumb shell": https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=trjs0tcd https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=trjs0tcd Of course, I'm not sure how either compares to electron, and I'm sure it depends on the app.
lancesells 6y ago
Totally agree. I switched from the Electron app to Safari and everything is much nicer and I use it more. I admittedly don't have the most modern computer but this scrolling through a page of text should not be sluggish and unable to maintain a normal frame rate.

burtonator 6y ago

Electron isn't any slower than any other app. Might use an extra 100MB of RAM but that's like $5... With notion it's probably the app. Not electron's fault. source: me... developer and worked with the Electron platform for 2+ years

codegladiator 6y ago
> 100MB of RAM but that's like $5 No one is getting a 100 MB of ram extra for anything. But yeah I don't blame electron here. Have build electron apps and apart from the initial load time everything is mostly under devs control.