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I'm the author of this, and I don't completely disagree. I don't think the web engine is that bad of a UI layer, but it's nowhere near the best. If you don't l

by api 5y ago

I'm the author of this, and I don't completely disagree. I don't think the web engine is that bad of a UI layer, but it's nowhere near the best. If you don't like the trend toward web-ification of the desktop, don't blame developers or Electron. Blame OS vendors for refusing to field a portable API for the large common core of desktop app functionality, something for 2D GUIs analogous to OpenGL. Why do we have standard 3D libraries, standard APIs for files and I/O, standard networking APIs, but no standard GUI API? ... because OS vendors still want to try to herd developers into building apps for only their platform. Developers (myself included) respond with "fuck you" and use web technologies. There is also Qt, but it's fairly antiquated. It doesn't use or support the reactive UI paradigm, and after using React I can't go back. Every other GUI coding paradigm I've seen degenerates into spaghetti code. All the other options (other than Qt or web technologies) falls down in the area of accessibility, making it not usable for serious work.

mixmastamyk 5y ago
> Every other GUI coding paradigm I've seen degenerates into spaghetti code. That's typically avoided by decoupling model and view and/or similar functional patterns. What else is the paradigm providing?
pseudalopex 5y ago
Operating systems have different features and conventions. And why would vendors care what cross platform technologies you use? I doubt the framework you want them to create would change much. Many Electron fans talk about how apps should look and feel exactly the same on every OS. They say web technologies are the best UI layer by far. And it isn't like Slack or Microsoft don't have the resources to make native apps.
- sofixa 5y ago
  > Many Electron fans talk about how apps should look and feel exactly the same on every OS Don't you think it's a good idea to have consistent UI and UX cross platform? If a user switches between the mobile/mac/Windows/web version, everything should change? > And it isn't like Slack or Microsoft don't have the resources to make native apps. Considering Microsoft seemingly don't have the resources to make a functional Electron app for Teams, and the Linux and macOS versions are always late and buggy, apparently they can't.
  - ryandrake 5y ago
    > Don't you think it's a good idea to have consistent UI and UX cross platform? No. Users don't typically switch platforms often. End users expect applications to be consistent with other applications on their platform. If every other application on my system uses ⌘Q to quit, and yours doesn't because you're trying to be consistent with some other platform I've never used, then yours is going to seem like it has the broken UI.
    - sofixa 5y ago
      > No. Users don't typically switch platforms often Users don't switch between mobile, PC? By far the most common mobile and PC OSes, Android and Windows, look nothing alike. Using something as simple as a chat app on both in "native" modes can be a burden. I
      - ryandrake 5y ago
        1. Users definitely don't want consistency across mobile and desktop. Mobile interfaces displayed on a desktop look like ultra-simplified toys and desktop interfaces displayed on mobile are too dense. 2. The article/thread is about native vs. web UIs on desktop platforms so not sure how mobile is even relevant.
        sofixa 5y ago
        > Mobile interfaces displayed on a desktop look like ultra-simplified toys and desktop interfaces displayed on mobile are too dense I'm talking about consistency, not copy pasting. Google's Material Design is sufficiently consistent that switching between mobile and desktop ( web) is fine > The article/thread is about native vs. web UIs on desktop platforms so not sure how mobile is even relevant Indeed, but one of the main points for native UI on desktop is for native OS UX consistency, and my point is that i prefer app consistency cross platform over OS consistency. Especially when the most popular desktop OS changes its UX paradigm half-heartedly every few years. Are you an Apple user per chance? Most people who seem to prefer "native" UX seem to prefer Apple's different way of doing UX, which i understand can be difficult when switching to a cross platform UI which is consistent between platforms and is closer to Windows and Linux UX than it is to Apple's.
- api 5y ago
  Web technologies have become the most productive UI layer due to a lot of developer work on abstracting them via things like React and the many React-based view libraries. The same kind of paradigm could be done with native-mode libraries but nobody has done it because all the momentum is behind web technology now. My real argument was that fighting this trend may be pissing into a hurricane. All the momentum may be behind web tech, so maybe we should just focus on making it better as a UI layer and fixing its problems instead of developing native mode UI layers that nobody will use. WASM may eventually liberate us from JavaScript. Another way to do that would be to add C/C++ level API hooks to web renderers like Chromium and WebKit to allow the DOM to be manipulated from native code. Then we could write a native UI toolkit using web view renderers with no JavaScript at all.

by api 5y ago

mixmastamyk 5y ago

> Every other GUI coding paradigm I've seen degenerates into spaghetti code. That's typically avoided by decoupling model and view and/or similar functional patterns. What else is the paradigm providing?

pseudalopex 5y ago

Operating systems have different features and conventions. And why would vendors care what cross platform technologies you use? I doubt the framework you want them to create would change much. Many Electron fans talk about how apps should look and feel exactly the same on every OS. They say web technologies are the best UI layer by far. And it isn't like Slack or Microsoft don't have the resources to make native apps.

sofixa 5y ago
> Many Electron fans talk about how apps should look and feel exactly the same on every OS Don't you think it's a good idea to have consistent UI and UX cross platform? If a user switches between the mobile/mac/Windows/web version, everything should change? > And it isn't like Slack or Microsoft don't have the resources to make native apps. Considering Microsoft seemingly don't have the resources to make a functional Electron app for Teams, and the Linux and macOS versions are always late and buggy, apparently they can't.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  > Don't you think it's a good idea to have consistent UI and UX cross platform? No. Users don't typically switch platforms often. End users expect applications to be consistent with other applications on their platform. If every other application on my system uses ⌘Q to quit, and yours doesn't because you're trying to be consistent with some other platform I've never used, then yours is going to seem like it has the broken UI.
  - sofixa 5y ago
    > No. Users don't typically switch platforms often Users don't switch between mobile, PC? By far the most common mobile and PC OSes, Android and Windows, look nothing alike. Using something as simple as a chat app on both in "native" modes can be a burden. I
    - ryandrake 5y ago
      1. Users definitely don't want consistency across mobile and desktop. Mobile interfaces displayed on a desktop look like ultra-simplified toys and desktop interfaces displayed on mobile are too dense. 2. The article/thread is about native vs. web UIs on desktop platforms so not sure how mobile is even relevant.
      - sofixa 5y ago
        > Mobile interfaces displayed on a desktop look like ultra-simplified toys and desktop interfaces displayed on mobile are too dense I'm talking about consistency, not copy pasting. Google's Material Design is sufficiently consistent that switching between mobile and desktop ( web) is fine > The article/thread is about native vs. web UIs on desktop platforms so not sure how mobile is even relevant Indeed, but one of the main points for native UI on desktop is for native OS UX consistency, and my point is that i prefer app consistency cross platform over OS consistency. Especially when the most popular desktop OS changes its UX paradigm half-heartedly every few years. Are you an Apple user per chance? Most people who seem to prefer "native" UX seem to prefer Apple's different way of doing UX, which i understand can be difficult when switching to a cross platform UI which is consistent between platforms and is closer to Windows and Linux UX than it is to Apple's.
api 5y ago
Web technologies have become the most productive UI layer due to a lot of developer work on abstracting them via things like React and the many React-based view libraries. The same kind of paradigm could be done with native-mode libraries but nobody has done it because all the momentum is behind web technology now. My real argument was that fighting this trend may be pissing into a hurricane. All the momentum may be behind web tech, so maybe we should just focus on making it better as a UI layer and fixing its problems instead of developing native mode UI layers that nobody will use. WASM may eventually liberate us from JavaScript. Another way to do that would be to add C/C++ level API hooks to web renderers like Chromium and WebKit to allow the DOM to be manipulated from native code. Then we could write a native UI toolkit using web view renderers with no JavaScript at all.