5 ms·

> which is why now almost every single piece of software has installer that's at least 500 MB large. I know pessimism about software is in fashion, but exagger

> which is why now almost every single piece of software has installer that's at least 500 MB large. I know pessimism about software is in fashion, but exaggerating the problem doesn't help. The actual size of the latest version of Electron (on Windows) is 181 MB uncompressed, 77 MB zip-compressed, and 51 MB 7z-compressed. Not great, but again, let's not make it look worse than it is. Also, there is hope. Microsoft's WebView2 [1] means that Windows has a modern, shared, embeddable web rendering engine for the first time in several years. And Tauri [2] is making it easier for web developers to take advantage of WebView2 on Windows, and WebKit on Mac and Linux, to create lightweight native applications using web technologies. [1]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/webview2/ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/webview2/ [2]: https://tauri.studio/en/ https://tauri.studio/en/

laurent123456 5y ago
Well bashing Electron is popular, this is why even a blatantly incorrect comment is automatically the top one as long as they are denigrating Electron.
thrower123 5y ago
At the moment, realistically using WebView2 requires shipping a WebView2 Runtime, either a fixed version or a bootstrapper. That's still over a hundred MB. I don't quite understand why that isn't being included with Edgeium, maybe it will be there in the future, but as of now, having Edge installed is no guarantee that any software trying to use WebView2 will work. I've got too many scars from needing to ship shared Microsoft runtimes in the past to be entirely happy about this current situation.
- wila 5y ago
  I've got a lot of scars from MS... but the bootstrapper is 1.7MB. It will then pull in WebView2. WebView2 btw is awesome (I've spent a lot of time with it already, see my profile if you want to know why)
- devwastaken 5y ago
  Webview is not a replacement. Webviews for GUIs is the worst of all worlds. You're packaging up two separate event based runtimes, chromium and node, and have no ability to interface with V8, meaning youre actually losing significant performance by having to serialize/deserislize data from node, to the browsers window, then deserislized on message in the browsers packaged JS engine. It makes no sense to treat your desktop GUIs as closed sandboxes, what's the threat model? Electron is not simply chromium, it has a bunch of optimizations, fixes, and prebundled functionality.
  - mrpippy 5y ago
    This entire thread is about which webview to use as an actual web view in an otherwise native application, not trying to use them as apps
- WorldMaker 5y ago
  Shipping WebView2 runtime "in-box" in Windows is supposed to start with Windows 10 21H2 and Windows 11. I believe soon after both release (Chromium) Edge will also start shipping it by default down to previous Windows 10 versions still in security support.
devwastaken 5y ago
Webviews can't access the V8 engine, have different implementations on every platform, and are worse in performance. As a business would you save 120MB in filesize, or thousands of hours in development time? Electron isn't even unique in this. Blender is over 200MB now. Photoshop and Autodesk products have been big for a long time.
- icegreentea2 5y ago
  I'm still getting my head around electron development, but only the main process in electron is really supposed to access the V8 engine right (if you turn sandboxing on anyways). With sandboxing on, you're still doing IPC from your render context to some backend, where for webview would be whatever framework is using the webview right? Is the V8 performance benefit really that high compared to something like C# just calling system calls?
  - janderland 5y ago
    I’d assume it’s more about the tooling and libraries for JS. If I want to build an HTML based UI, I have thousands of JavaScript libraries alongside thousands of developers who know how to use them. If I want to build HTML that calls into C# I’ll need to do a lot more work myself.
- cma 5y ago
  Blender includes art assets like HDR cubemaps.
  - makapuf 5y ago
    And so so so much functionality. Video editor, modeler, several renderers, image editor, python text editor, sculpt software, importer, video audio mixer, compositor, graph editor, scripting engine, .. monkey model. So much functionality comparing it with irc clients is not fair.
- doomrobo 5y ago
  Would WASM solve the performance issue? One can imagine writing a webview GUI in a compiled language in order to get the speed and size benefits.
tonyedgecombe 5y ago
I have two Electron apps on my computer, one is 470MB and the other 511MB.
- capableweb 5y ago
  Which ones? I have two too (Obsidian and IRCCloud), each weighing in on 88M and 52M. So it does seem it's possible.
- nicoburns 5y ago
  That doesn't mean it's elecrron taking up the space. Native apps are ofteb much larger than that.
jimmygrapes 5y ago
Just wanna give a shout out to tauri's mobile site; it has a "Learn More" button prominently on the first screen, ABOVE the standard "Get Started" button most projects use. I greatly appreciate the opportunity to understand what I'm starting before doing it.

laurent123456 5y ago

Well bashing Electron is popular, this is why even a blatantly incorrect comment is automatically the top one as long as they are denigrating Electron.

thrower123 5y ago

At the moment, realistically using WebView2 requires shipping a WebView2 Runtime, either a fixed version or a bootstrapper. That's still over a hundred MB. I don't quite understand why that isn't being included with Edgeium, maybe it will be there in the future, but as of now, having Edge installed is no guarantee that any software trying to use WebView2 will work. I've got too many scars from needing to ship shared Microsoft runtimes in the past to be entirely happy about this current situation.

wila 5y ago
I've got a lot of scars from MS... but the bootstrapper is 1.7MB. It will then pull in WebView2. WebView2 btw is awesome (I've spent a lot of time with it already, see my profile if you want to know why)
devwastaken 5y ago
Webview is not a replacement. Webviews for GUIs is the worst of all worlds. You're packaging up two separate event based runtimes, chromium and node, and have no ability to interface with V8, meaning youre actually losing significant performance by having to serialize/deserislize data from node, to the browsers window, then deserislized on message in the browsers packaged JS engine. It makes no sense to treat your desktop GUIs as closed sandboxes, what's the threat model? Electron is not simply chromium, it has a bunch of optimizations, fixes, and prebundled functionality.
- mrpippy 5y ago
  This entire thread is about which webview to use as an actual web view in an otherwise native application, not trying to use them as apps
WorldMaker 5y ago
Shipping WebView2 runtime "in-box" in Windows is supposed to start with Windows 10 21H2 and Windows 11. I believe soon after both release (Chromium) Edge will also start shipping it by default down to previous Windows 10 versions still in security support.

devwastaken 5y ago

Webviews can't access the V8 engine, have different implementations on every platform, and are worse in performance. As a business would you save 120MB in filesize, or thousands of hours in development time? Electron isn't even unique in this. Blender is over 200MB now. Photoshop and Autodesk products have been big for a long time.

icegreentea2 5y ago
I'm still getting my head around electron development, but only the main process in electron is really supposed to access the V8 engine right (if you turn sandboxing on anyways). With sandboxing on, you're still doing IPC from your render context to some backend, where for webview would be whatever framework is using the webview right? Is the V8 performance benefit really that high compared to something like C# just calling system calls?
- janderland 5y ago
  I’d assume it’s more about the tooling and libraries for JS. If I want to build an HTML based UI, I have thousands of JavaScript libraries alongside thousands of developers who know how to use them. If I want to build HTML that calls into C# I’ll need to do a lot more work myself.
cma 5y ago
Blender includes art assets like HDR cubemaps.
- makapuf 5y ago
  And so so so much functionality. Video editor, modeler, several renderers, image editor, python text editor, sculpt software, importer, video audio mixer, compositor, graph editor, scripting engine, .. monkey model. So much functionality comparing it with irc clients is not fair.
doomrobo 5y ago
Would WASM solve the performance issue? One can imagine writing a webview GUI in a compiled language in order to get the speed and size benefits.

tonyedgecombe 5y ago

I have two Electron apps on my computer, one is 470MB and the other 511MB.

capableweb 5y ago
Which ones? I have two too (Obsidian and IRCCloud), each weighing in on 88M and 52M. So it does seem it's possible.
nicoburns 5y ago
That doesn't mean it's elecrron taking up the space. Native apps are ofteb much larger than that.

jimmygrapes 5y ago

Just wanna give a shout out to tauri's mobile site; it has a "Learn More" button prominently on the first screen, ABOVE the standard "Get Started" button most projects use. I greatly appreciate the opportunity to understand what I'm starting before doing it.