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Could someone give a bird's eye view summary of why 1Password moving to Electron is bad? Are there documented security risks, or is it more just a UX/UI aesthet

Could someone give a bird's eye view summary of why 1Password moving to Electron is bad? Are there documented security risks, or is it more just a UX/UI aesthetic issue?

whitepoplar 5y ago
Memory bloat, for one.
brandon272 5y ago
It's popular to hate on Electron. The most common argument thrown around is "bloat". I also detect a perception among engineers that they consider Electron "the easy way out" vs. maintaining strictly native apps. Reminds me of the discourse around Sharkbite fittings on plumbing forums. I have to wonder what percentage of 1Password users know what languages or frameworks 1Password uses, much less care what languages or frameworks it uses? I assume it must be a fraction of 1%.
- kristofferR 5y ago
  They're gonna know as soon as they try to configure their settings: https://twitter.com/parrots/status/1425481491245670404/photo/1 https://twitter.com/parrots/status/1425481491245670404/photo...
  - brandon272 5y ago
    Yes, if they are someone familiar with what Electron even is, which is not most people. And even among software engineers who might know and care about Electron, for what percentage of those people is Electron a dealbreaker?
- vmladenov 5y ago
  Electron apps are laggy and frequently lack native features whereas Cocoa apps often get them for free when the OS updates.
pseudalopex 5y ago
Memory, battery, and latency are the main reasons.
topheroo 5y ago
For me, the "bloat" issue is less significant than the way that Electron apps don't have native macOS controls. They feel like a web app in a window, and attempts to emulate macOS-style controls just feel like facsimiles.
apple4ever 5y ago
It does not feel native to the OS. It does not have the same font styling, color styling, windowing behavior, and keyboard/mouse behavior as a native app.
mynameismon 5y ago
To me, native apps aren't so much an issue as is bloat. Despite having a Chromium based browser (Vivaldi), I am required to install Chromium all over again with every Electron app, and that really blows up both disk space and memory, considering the number of Electron apps these days. Another big issue is performance, most Electron based apps aren't optimised for performance making them slower than Chrome itself despite using more memory.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
Electron can be a blessing for small teams building complex apps for multiple platforms. It’s a positive to have a single interface that runs on Mac, Windows, Linux, and even the web browser. But it comes at a price of higher resource usage and slower apps. It’s not a big deal to wait a couple seconds to load something like VSCode when I’m going to leave it open and use it all day, but I don’t want to invoke all of that overhead for a simple password manager that gets opened and closed all day. I really wish they’d focus on fast, lean native apps. They have the funding, a high price point, and even recurring revenue to fund it. This feels like an arbitrary decision that sounds good on paper but misses the fact that they’re best served by small, lean native apps.
cytzol 5y ago
> Could someone give a bird's eye view summary of why 1Password moving to Electron is bad? There are a couple of security risks associated with moving to Electron, but I believe the company has the resources to keep up with them. So it's more of a user experience issue. I don't really mind how the app looks, as long as it looks the same as the other applications on my system, and works consistently amongst them, and it's here that Electron's bad reputation really starts to make itself known. I downloaded the beta, signed in, and played around for a bit. Some thoughts: • The scroll bars don't just look different, they act different. There's no overscroll, which I'm really used to. Also, when I scroll fast through a list, the scrolling indicator lags as it tries to catch up. • Resizing the window lags a lot, and in between lag frames, you can see shades of grey as the renderer tries to catch up. 1Password 7 is damn near instant when you resize it. • Icons and text pop into view after you've scrolled, rather than as you scroll. 1Password 7 is buttery smooth in comparison. • Fonts look weird. 1Password 7 text looks like every other app on my system; 1Password 8 text looks blurry. Every time I look at it, it looks wrong. • The Preferences window used to be a separate window, like it is for all other applications; now, it's a modal. You can't view the preferences and the vault at the same time. • Oh, and it opened already using more memory than the 1Password 7 instance I've had running for _weeks_. I really have no idea why they decided to ruin a great app like this. 1Password 8 is, as far as I can see, worse in every way than 1Password 7.

Could someone give a bird's eye view summary of why 1Password moving to Electron is bad? Are there documented security risks, or is it more just a UX/UI aesthetic issue?

whitepoplar 5y ago

Memory bloat, for one.

brandon272 5y ago

It's popular to hate on Electron. The most common argument thrown around is "bloat". I also detect a perception among engineers that they consider Electron "the easy way out" vs. maintaining strictly native apps. Reminds me of the discourse around Sharkbite fittings on plumbing forums. I have to wonder what percentage of 1Password users know what languages or frameworks 1Password uses, much less care what languages or frameworks it uses? I assume it must be a fraction of 1%.

kristofferR 5y ago
They're gonna know as soon as they try to configure their settings: https://twitter.com/parrots/status/1425481491245670404/photo/1 https://twitter.com/parrots/status/1425481491245670404/photo...
- brandon272 5y ago
  Yes, if they are someone familiar with what Electron even is, which is not most people. And even among software engineers who might know and care about Electron, for what percentage of those people is Electron a dealbreaker?
vmladenov 5y ago
Electron apps are laggy and frequently lack native features whereas Cocoa apps often get them for free when the OS updates.

pseudalopex 5y ago

Memory, battery, and latency are the main reasons.

topheroo 5y ago

For me, the "bloat" issue is less significant than the way that Electron apps don't have native macOS controls. They feel like a web app in a window, and attempts to emulate macOS-style controls just feel like facsimiles.

apple4ever 5y ago

It does not feel native to the OS. It does not have the same font styling, color styling, windowing behavior, and keyboard/mouse behavior as a native app.

mynameismon 5y ago

To me, native apps aren't so much an issue as is bloat. Despite having a Chromium based browser (Vivaldi), I am required to install Chromium all over again with every Electron app, and that really blows up both disk space and memory, considering the number of Electron apps these days. Another big issue is performance, most Electron based apps aren't optimised for performance making them slower than Chrome itself despite using more memory.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

Electron can be a blessing for small teams building complex apps for multiple platforms. It’s a positive to have a single interface that runs on Mac, Windows, Linux, and even the web browser. But it comes at a price of higher resource usage and slower apps. It’s not a big deal to wait a couple seconds to load something like VSCode when I’m going to leave it open and use it all day, but I don’t want to invoke all of that overhead for a simple password manager that gets opened and closed all day. I really wish they’d focus on fast, lean native apps. They have the funding, a high price point, and even recurring revenue to fund it. This feels like an arbitrary decision that sounds good on paper but misses the fact that they’re best served by small, lean native apps.

cytzol 5y ago

> Could someone give a bird's eye view summary of why 1Password moving to Electron is bad? There are a couple of security risks associated with moving to Electron, but I believe the company has the resources to keep up with them. So it's more of a user experience issue. I don't really mind how the app looks, as long as it looks the same as the other applications on my system, and works consistently amongst them, and it's here that Electron's bad reputation really starts to make itself known. I downloaded the beta, signed in, and played around for a bit. Some thoughts: • The scroll bars don't just look different, they act different. There's no overscroll, which I'm really used to. Also, when I scroll fast through a list, the scrolling indicator lags as it tries to catch up. • Resizing the window lags a lot, and in between lag frames, you can see shades of grey as the renderer tries to catch up. 1Password 7 is damn near instant when you resize it. • Icons and text pop into view after you've scrolled, rather than as you scroll. 1Password 7 is buttery smooth in comparison. • Fonts look weird. 1Password 7 text looks like every other app on my system; 1Password 8 text looks blurry. Every time I look at it, it looks wrong. • The Preferences window used to be a separate window, like it is for all other applications; now, it's a modal. You can't view the preferences and the vault at the same time. • Oh, and it opened already using more memory than the 1Password 7 instance I've had running for _weeks_. I really have no idea why they decided to ruin a great app like this. 1Password 8 is, as far as I can see, worse in every way than 1Password 7.