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Slack originally was platform specific webviews, and migrated to avoid issues like what is mentioned in this thread. One of the engineers who did it has even co

Slack originally was platform specific webviews, and migrated to avoid issues like what is mentioned in this thread. One of the engineers who did it has even commented on HN to explain this.

deleted 6y ago
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brundolf 6y ago
It also launched 8 years ago; the web has changed a lot since then. Edge wasn't even around until 2015, much less being used for webviews.
- Klonoar 6y ago
  This sounds like you didn't look up and read the comment in question. Problems with cross-platform webviews stopped being the HTML/CSS/JS layer long ago; it's integration, availability, and rate-of-updates that are common blockers. Call me when Microsoft actually ships WebView2 with the OS.
  - efwfwef 6y ago
    if you would link to that comment it would be helpful
    - sodality2 6y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18763449 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18763449 "This is literally what Slack moved from years ago, because it was very problematic, let me tell you why since I'm the one who did it. * Adding new APIs was a huge pain in the ass, you had to write all of this ugly bridge code in Objective C, and the APIs ended up being super unnatural on the JS side. As a result, desktop integration wasn't done much since it felt like a "Black Magic" type thing. Writing new APIs in Electron is Just JavaScript, so you can make something much more natural. * We could literally do fuck-all for people running old versions of macOS - you can't upgrade Safari on old machines, you just Get What You Get. For awhile, every YouTube video on older macOS versions had a pink shade to it. Users write in, "This is clearly wrong!" "Yep, but we can't fix it. Sorry." * And big spoiler - WKWebView uses _basically_ the same amount of memory give-or-take a few MBs as Chromium. It's the content that sets the memory usage bar, not the host. "
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saagarjha 6y ago
This is probably the comment you're talking about: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18763449 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18763449. I was unconvinced then, and I am even more unconvinced now as I run a fully native Cocoa Slack client on my Mac that was written by one person reverse engineering APIs.
- macrael 6y ago
  what's that client?
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    https://shrugs.app/ https://shrugs.app/.
- Klonoar 6y ago
  Nobody ever said that Slack couldn't be implemented in Cocoa, and it's really not remarkable that someone did it. ;P You and I both know that one person can write UI in a vacuum, but there's a litany of other challenges that come up when positioning an application across platforms - sharing code, resources, etc. If all you look at it on is a technical level, you're doing the problem a disservice.
- fn1 6y ago
  That same reasoning is why Google is having a YouTube app on AppleTV which does not use native widgets, so bluetooth keyboards don't work, scrolling is off etc. It's not that they cannot afford building 10 native AppleTV apps in parallel and pick the best one.

Slack originally was platform specific webviews, and migrated to avoid issues like what is mentioned in this thread. One of the engineers who did it has even commented on HN to explain this.

deleted 6y ago

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brundolf 6y ago

It also launched 8 years ago; the web has changed a lot since then. Edge wasn't even around until 2015, much less being used for webviews.

Klonoar 6y ago
This sounds like you didn't look up and read the comment in question. Problems with cross-platform webviews stopped being the HTML/CSS/JS layer long ago; it's integration, availability, and rate-of-updates that are common blockers. Call me when Microsoft actually ships WebView2 with the OS.
- efwfwef 6y ago
  if you would link to that comment it would be helpful
  - sodality2 6y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18763449 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18763449 "This is literally what Slack moved from years ago, because it was very problematic, let me tell you why since I'm the one who did it. * Adding new APIs was a huge pain in the ass, you had to write all of this ugly bridge code in Objective C, and the APIs ended up being super unnatural on the JS side. As a result, desktop integration wasn't done much since it felt like a "Black Magic" type thing. Writing new APIs in Electron is Just JavaScript, so you can make something much more natural. * We could literally do fuck-all for people running old versions of macOS - you can't upgrade Safari on old machines, you just Get What You Get. For awhile, every YouTube video on older macOS versions had a pink shade to it. Users write in, "This is clearly wrong!" "Yep, but we can't fix it. Sorry." * And big spoiler - WKWebView uses _basically_ the same amount of memory give-or-take a few MBs as Chromium. It's the content that sets the memory usage bar, not the host. "

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saagarjha 6y ago

This is probably the comment you're talking about: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18763449 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18763449. I was unconvinced then, and I am even more unconvinced now as I run a fully native Cocoa Slack client on my Mac that was written by one person reverse engineering APIs.

macrael 6y ago
what's that client?
- saagarjha 6y ago
  https://shrugs.app/ https://shrugs.app/.
Klonoar 6y ago
Nobody ever said that Slack couldn't be implemented in Cocoa, and it's really not remarkable that someone did it. ;P You and I both know that one person can write UI in a vacuum, but there's a litany of other challenges that come up when positioning an application across platforms - sharing code, resources, etc. If all you look at it on is a technical level, you're doing the problem a disservice.
fn1 6y ago
That same reasoning is why Google is having a YouTube app on AppleTV which does not use native widgets, so bluetooth keyboards don't work, scrolling is off etc. It's not that they cannot afford building 10 native AppleTV apps in parallel and pick the best one.