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The 5th point in this article is what makes me end up using Electron most of the time. As much as I love Tauri (and Wails), WebView requires to make sure the a

by keraf 4y ago

The 5th point in this article is what makes me end up using Electron most of the time. As much as I love Tauri (and Wails), WebView requires to make sure the application renders exactly the same across all platforms. Sure, Electron comes with its downsides like the article rightfully points out. But having a UI that renders and behaves exactly the same on all platforms (thanks to the version locked Chromium bundled in the app) is really nice to have. I wish there would be the possibility to bundle a renderer (maybe a more lightweight one?) with Tauri or Wails instead of using WebView.

cageface 4y ago
I recently chose Electron over Tauri for the same reasons. Tauri would be a better fit for my app in some respects but it's a music player and Safari doesn't support all the audio formats I care about. https://github.com/milesegan/minimoon https://github.com/milesegan/minimoon
kitsunesoba 4y ago
The downside of that control though is an application that's arguably a little too specifically targeted — it's understandable wanting to target the same engine but if your app breaks with different but reasonably recent versions of chromium I would say it's too brittle. It also widens attack vectors considerably when your entire userbase is all on the same probably-outdated build of electron-bundled chromium.
- Klonoar 4y ago
  System webviews on macOS aren’t updated after a certain point, so Tauri is not necessarily always a win re: your final point.
  - WorldMaker 4y ago
    But that's an Apple problem, not a "you" problem in that case. In Electron the security burden for tracking Chromium CVEs and sending updates out is entirely yours, whereas with Tauri you outsource it. In Electron, Chromium CVEs are your CVEs. In Tauri, Safari CVEs remain Apple's CVEs and technically entirely outside the scope of your application bundle. The trade-off for "old macOS webviews" is that it's not your problem other than general, basic old pre-Chromium hegemony HTML kindness of building web apps that gracefully fail if features aren't available, which is probably what you should do anyway?
    - eropple 4y ago
      Your users don't care whose fault it is. Your app isn't working. You can choose to cut those users off, and that's totally an option...sometimes. Mac users are probably a little more tolerant of this than non-Mac users, because of the general upgrade treadmill, but whether you can get away with it is a question only you can answer for your app.
      - WorldMaker 4y ago
        That's still a very different class of problem from a CVE break of a single-point-of-failure is the point. Someone decides to use your Electron app's old Chromium build and a known CVE in it as a target vector for infecting or remote controlling user's machines is a very different problem from "because we are using system webviews this small CSS/JS feature doesn't work in this version of macOS, please upgrade". Even if the user rightfully blames you the app developer for both issues and doesn't allow you to point fingers upstream, one is a severe security threat that can destroy entire brands and the other is "mere tarnish" on a brand. (I know which class of problem I'd rather deal with, given the choice here.)
        eropple 4y ago
        It depends though, yeah? Like, at least then you can issue a patch. If a CVE sprouts up on an old version of an OS, you're pretty hosed.
    - greenhatman 4y ago
      This actually makes me think Electron will be a lot easier to support. Because at least you'd be able to control which version of Chromium your app ships with. If you're using Tauri, you'll need to support all the different versions of WebView that are out there.
BiteCode_dev 4y ago
If you only provide a desktop app yes. If you also provide a web app, then the work needs to be done anyway.
- Kye 4y ago
  Someone somewhere has already figured out how to run Electron through WASM.
  - Octoth0rpe 4y ago
    Please delete, your sentence is absolutely cursed.
pornel 4y ago
Is that really such a big deal? Browser engines these days aren't so bad, especially if all you need from them is basic CSS for the UI. You still have a fully-fledged native language underneath it, so you're not limited to what Web APIs can do.
- jahewson 4y ago
  There is no such thing as “basic CSS”. Of all things it’s the most wildly moving target I’ve ever encountered.
  - pornel 4y ago
    CSS evolves and there’s always some new funky selector or effect coming, but the whole point is that you don’t need to follow this year’s latest hotness. If you slap rounded corners and box-shadow (very old by now) you have 90% of what Apple calls design lately. For Windows “metro” you don’t even need rounded corners :)
    - RussianCow 4y ago
      > but the whole point is that you don’t need to follow this year’s latest hotness You might not have a choice. Sometimes even seemingly trivial APIs/features like SVG, flexbox, or audio/video behave slightly differently in different browsers, and it's easy to sink a lot of time into debugging these differences. I'm not saying the effort isn't ever worth it, and it's certainly better now than it ever was in the past, but I think you're underestimating the amount of work it takes to properly support a complex web app across all modern browsers. With that said, if you're just using web technologies to throw together a UI to slap on your native app that does all the heavy lifting, then sure, maybe using something like Tauri is worth it. Even then, it might not be worth the QA burden of having to test all UI changes against every supported platform, and then the support burden of getting platform-specific bug reports.
      - mccorrinall 4y ago
        Fyi you need to optimize for two browsers only: chromium (edge) is the webview on windows, and webkit is the webview on linux and macos. Anyway, I’m curious about the svg and flexbox issues you mentioned. I have not experienced any differences with those across systems and browsers.
autoconfig 4y ago
Same here. Depending on the type of application being built, this can be a huge downside. E.g., if you want to store data locally using IndexedDB getting it to work properly on Safari (and to some extent Firefox) can be a soul destroying experience. See here for some examples: https://gist.github.com/pesterhazy/4de96193af89a6dd5ce682ce2adff49a https://gist.github.com/pesterhazy/4de96193af89a6dd5ce682ce2... Unless I'm building an app that also needs to work on the web, I'm choosing Electron.
- alexvoda 4y ago
  And here you have proof for part of the reason Chrome dominates the web now. No matter the values and benefits, testing on another browser is to much of a hassle for most web devs.
WhyNotHugo 4y ago
> As much as I love Tauri (and Wails), WebView requires to make sure the application renders exactly the same across all platforms. I think having an alternative to the Google-centric monoculture that is Chromium is actually one of Tauri's big points.

by keraf 4y ago

cageface 4y ago

I recently chose Electron over Tauri for the same reasons. Tauri would be a better fit for my app in some respects but it's a music player and Safari doesn't support all the audio formats I care about. https://github.com/milesegan/minimoon https://github.com/milesegan/minimoon

kitsunesoba 4y ago

The downside of that control though is an application that's arguably a little too specifically targeted — it's understandable wanting to target the same engine but if your app breaks with different but reasonably recent versions of chromium I would say it's too brittle. It also widens attack vectors considerably when your entire userbase is all on the same probably-outdated build of electron-bundled chromium.

Klonoar 4y ago
System webviews on macOS aren’t updated after a certain point, so Tauri is not necessarily always a win re: your final point.
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  But that's an Apple problem, not a "you" problem in that case. In Electron the security burden for tracking Chromium CVEs and sending updates out is entirely yours, whereas with Tauri you outsource it. In Electron, Chromium CVEs are your CVEs. In Tauri, Safari CVEs remain Apple's CVEs and technically entirely outside the scope of your application bundle. The trade-off for "old macOS webviews" is that it's not your problem other than general, basic old pre-Chromium hegemony HTML kindness of building web apps that gracefully fail if features aren't available, which is probably what you should do anyway?
  - eropple 4y ago
    Your users don't care whose fault it is. Your app isn't working. You can choose to cut those users off, and that's totally an option...sometimes. Mac users are probably a little more tolerant of this than non-Mac users, because of the general upgrade treadmill, but whether you can get away with it is a question only you can answer for your app.
    - WorldMaker 4y ago
      That's still a very different class of problem from a CVE break of a single-point-of-failure is the point. Someone decides to use your Electron app's old Chromium build and a known CVE in it as a target vector for infecting or remote controlling user's machines is a very different problem from "because we are using system webviews this small CSS/JS feature doesn't work in this version of macOS, please upgrade". Even if the user rightfully blames you the app developer for both issues and doesn't allow you to point fingers upstream, one is a severe security threat that can destroy entire brands and the other is "mere tarnish" on a brand. (I know which class of problem I'd rather deal with, given the choice here.)
      - eropple 4y ago
        It depends though, yeah? Like, at least then you can issue a patch. If a CVE sprouts up on an old version of an OS, you're pretty hosed.
  - greenhatman 4y ago
    This actually makes me think Electron will be a lot easier to support. Because at least you'd be able to control which version of Chromium your app ships with. If you're using Tauri, you'll need to support all the different versions of WebView that are out there.

BiteCode_dev 4y ago

If you only provide a desktop app yes. If you also provide a web app, then the work needs to be done anyway.

Kye 4y ago
Someone somewhere has already figured out how to run Electron through WASM.
- Octoth0rpe 4y ago
  Please delete, your sentence is absolutely cursed.

pornel 4y ago

Is that really such a big deal? Browser engines these days aren't so bad, especially if all you need from them is basic CSS for the UI. You still have a fully-fledged native language underneath it, so you're not limited to what Web APIs can do.

jahewson 4y ago
There is no such thing as “basic CSS”. Of all things it’s the most wildly moving target I’ve ever encountered.
- pornel 4y ago
  CSS evolves and there’s always some new funky selector or effect coming, but the whole point is that you don’t need to follow this year’s latest hotness. If you slap rounded corners and box-shadow (very old by now) you have 90% of what Apple calls design lately. For Windows “metro” you don’t even need rounded corners :)
  - RussianCow 4y ago
    > but the whole point is that you don’t need to follow this year’s latest hotness You might not have a choice. Sometimes even seemingly trivial APIs/features like SVG, flexbox, or audio/video behave slightly differently in different browsers, and it's easy to sink a lot of time into debugging these differences. I'm not saying the effort isn't ever worth it, and it's certainly better now than it ever was in the past, but I think you're underestimating the amount of work it takes to properly support a complex web app across all modern browsers. With that said, if you're just using web technologies to throw together a UI to slap on your native app that does all the heavy lifting, then sure, maybe using something like Tauri is worth it. Even then, it might not be worth the QA burden of having to test all UI changes against every supported platform, and then the support burden of getting platform-specific bug reports.
    - mccorrinall 4y ago
      Fyi you need to optimize for two browsers only: chromium (edge) is the webview on windows, and webkit is the webview on linux and macos. Anyway, I’m curious about the svg and flexbox issues you mentioned. I have not experienced any differences with those across systems and browsers.

autoconfig 4y ago

Same here. Depending on the type of application being built, this can be a huge downside. E.g., if you want to store data locally using IndexedDB getting it to work properly on Safari (and to some extent Firefox) can be a soul destroying experience. See here for some examples: https://gist.github.com/pesterhazy/4de96193af89a6dd5ce682ce2adff49a https://gist.github.com/pesterhazy/4de96193af89a6dd5ce682ce2... Unless I'm building an app that also needs to work on the web, I'm choosing Electron.

alexvoda 4y ago
And here you have proof for part of the reason Chrome dominates the web now. No matter the values and benefits, testing on another browser is to much of a hassle for most web devs.

WhyNotHugo 4y ago

> As much as I love Tauri (and Wails), WebView requires to make sure the application renders exactly the same across all platforms. I think having an alternative to the Google-centric monoculture that is Chromium is actually one of Tauri's big points.