3 ms·

A lot of times a cross platform non-native GUI is the right tool. Same UX on every platform. What's not to like? Allows faster iteration for small teams, you ca

by pas 4y ago

A lot of times a cross platform non-native GUI is the right tool. Same UX on every platform. What's not to like? Allows faster iteration for small teams, you can use TS and doesn't even have to think about Swift/ObjC/Java/Kotlin/C++, and you can use whatever you like for the backend.

pjmlp 4y ago
PWA then.
- pas 4y ago
  Yes, but the platform gods say not really. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32441258 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32441258
int_19h 4y ago
> Same UX on every platform. What's not to like? Speaking as a user, that's exactly what I don't like. I don't care about same UX on every platform; I'd rather have consistent UX across apps on the same platform.
- pas 4y ago
  Sometimes you work on a platform that does not have a native style. (Eg. kiosks.) Or the native app is just an extension of a very website-driven service. (Eg. an app for event management, ticket admissions.) As a user I prefer something that works, making sure one thing works consistently is easier than testing different native things that implement the same functionality. (Oh, and as a user I very much prefer that it does implement the same functionality.)
FridgeSeal 4y ago
> What's not to like? Native interfaces and behaviour are preferable over whatever options the app developer chooses to support. In the case of electron apps, effectively running multiple browsers is also in the “what not to like” basket. Native apps often have less input latency, and are significantly nicer to use. > Allows faster iteration for small teams As a user, I’d much, much prefer slower iteration if it meant the resulting app was better. Electron apps thrashing out pointless updates every other day just because they can isn’t always a positive in my book.
- pas 4y ago
  What's the native interface when Apple/Google/Samsung changes that every year (or two years)? What's the native interface of a kiosk at a car wash? (Where we used a touch screen running full screen Firefox and the users saw the same thing as they saw on their phone where they managed their wash coupons and whatevers.) On desktop I don't run slack, discord, teams (and whatever wants to run separately) separately, if something that doesn't do meaningful local I/O and/or computation cannot run in a browser, then I don't use it if I can avoid it at all. And I hopefully can keep my streak of not developing nor shipping any forced electron based mess. VSCode is fast. I'm surprised too. While native Windows things are just slow all over (with a beefy modern desktop). Seriously, how the fuck can the start menu be this ridiculously slow? I have like 50 things installed, and I use about 5 of those. And it takes forever to find those as I start typing. (I have KDE flashbacks!) Oh and super native Firefox is also a disaster when it comes to speed (I search for the same bookmarked pages in the awesomebar - the combined location and search bar, I have disabled the search part, because the UX was horrible, so it should just search in the local recency shorted LRU cached list of pages ... and it's dog slow and dumb). Big billion dollar unicorns push those meaningless updates, not small teams (at least in my experience).
shakow 4y ago
> Same UX on every platform. What's not to like? Everything. Make a website if that's what you want.
- pas 4y ago
  Yes, I want to do that, but Apple, Microsoft, and Google (as Android) continues to veto that. And there are some arguments for why (the advantages of the walled gardens of the "curated" platform stores, the tech inertia of the different APIs of apps vs websites, and the learned user behavior). Mozilla tried "Firefox OS" and it's hard to do it. Chrome tried service workers and persistent sites/apps, but.. it's just lame compared to shipping a separate app that bundles a web view and a backend.

by pas 4y ago

pjmlp 4y ago

PWA then.

pas 4y ago
Yes, but the platform gods say not really. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32441258 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32441258

int_19h 4y ago

> Same UX on every platform. What's not to like? Speaking as a user, that's exactly what I don't like. I don't care about same UX on every platform; I'd rather have consistent UX across apps on the same platform.

pas 4y ago
Sometimes you work on a platform that does not have a native style. (Eg. kiosks.) Or the native app is just an extension of a very website-driven service. (Eg. an app for event management, ticket admissions.) As a user I prefer something that works, making sure one thing works consistently is easier than testing different native things that implement the same functionality. (Oh, and as a user I very much prefer that it does implement the same functionality.)

FridgeSeal 4y ago

> What's not to like? Native interfaces and behaviour are preferable over whatever options the app developer chooses to support. In the case of electron apps, effectively running multiple browsers is also in the “what not to like” basket. Native apps often have less input latency, and are significantly nicer to use. > Allows faster iteration for small teams As a user, I’d much, much prefer slower iteration if it meant the resulting app was better. Electron apps thrashing out pointless updates every other day just because they can isn’t always a positive in my book.

pas 4y ago
What's the native interface when Apple/Google/Samsung changes that every year (or two years)? What's the native interface of a kiosk at a car wash? (Where we used a touch screen running full screen Firefox and the users saw the same thing as they saw on their phone where they managed their wash coupons and whatevers.) On desktop I don't run slack, discord, teams (and whatever wants to run separately) separately, if something that doesn't do meaningful local I/O and/or computation cannot run in a browser, then I don't use it if I can avoid it at all. And I hopefully can keep my streak of not developing nor shipping any forced electron based mess. VSCode is fast. I'm surprised too. While native Windows things are just slow all over (with a beefy modern desktop). Seriously, how the fuck can the start menu be this ridiculously slow? I have like 50 things installed, and I use about 5 of those. And it takes forever to find those as I start typing. (I have KDE flashbacks!) Oh and super native Firefox is also a disaster when it comes to speed (I search for the same bookmarked pages in the awesomebar - the combined location and search bar, I have disabled the search part, because the UX was horrible, so it should just search in the local recency shorted LRU cached list of pages ... and it's dog slow and dumb). Big billion dollar unicorns push those meaningless updates, not small teams (at least in my experience).

shakow 4y ago

> Same UX on every platform. What's not to like? Everything. Make a website if that's what you want.

pas 4y ago
Yes, I want to do that, but Apple, Microsoft, and Google (as Android) continues to veto that. And there are some arguments for why (the advantages of the walled gardens of the "curated" platform stores, the tech inertia of the different APIs of apps vs websites, and the learned user behavior). Mozilla tried "Firefox OS" and it's hard to do it. Chrome tried service workers and persistent sites/apps, but.. it's just lame compared to shipping a separate app that bundles a web view and a backend.