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The slow death of Electron & Co? Electron apps like Discord, Slack, etc. don't seem to gain any benefit from being wrapped in Electron anymore. Have one codeba
by samuelstros 3y ago
The slow death of Electron & Co?
Electron apps like Discord, Slack, etc. don't seem to gain any benefit from being wrapped in Electron anymore. Have one codebase, one app, that works everywhere and can now even be "installed" with Safari.
- iansinnott 3y agoYou're probably right with regard to Slack, Discord. However, some Electron apps require access to the filesystem or other APIs that these installed web pages wont't support (as far as I know). FS access is listed as a wishlist item in the article. Electron still has a lot going for it if you need access to system APIs or you want it to be cross platform.
- apatheticonion 3y agoWhy don't apps that require additional access write a "runtime" daemon their website can connect to? Actually that might be a security nightmare
- Wowfunhappy 3y agoThis sounds like what Figma does to support custom fonts in their webapp! https://help.figma.com/hc/en-us/articles/360039956894-Access-local-fonts-on-your-computer#browser https://help.figma.com/hc/en-us/articles/360039956894-Access...
- breckenedge 3y agoThe manifest.json spec supports declaring “file_handlers” mapped to a URL action. Only supported in Chrome and Edge at the moment. The action URL could be handled by the service worker, so there’s no need for files to be sent over the network if all the processing can happen offline.
- pjmlp 3y agoOne can only hope. We keep having this idea since MSHTML and XUL,and thankfully it eventually goes out of fashion. I already have a browser, an OS Web widgets, no need to package a browser with the application other than laziness. Everyone shipping Electron is yet another ChromeOS advocate.
- eviks 3y agoBut your "a browser" is different for other people, which one do you expect devs to target?
- pjmlp 3y agoI expect they to do the same I have been doing since 1996 for Web projects, Web standards, and do the needful to make it work across browsers. Alternatively, do what I have been doing since 1990, middleware for business logic with native UI integration. The four preceding years don't count, as I was using only Timex 2068 as my single computer.
- eviks 3y agoThe 90-s have very little to show for, especially in the area of Web projects and standards, the testament of the failure of the latter is precisely the required scale of "the needful"
- pjmlp 3y agoThankfully many old timers aren't frozen in the 90's, we rather use our experience to write proper Web applications instead of being ChromeOS advocates. Can't say the same for the Electron generation.
- dylan604 3y agohere here. please excuse me while i adjust my suspenders and twist my beard as i yell get off my lawn. when i reference things from the 90s, it is far from my being stuck there. it is because i have the living memory of the pain from that time, and can see it being repeated by the people that have no living memory of that time. i lived that pain once, i don't need to relive it because someone else hasn't and is too stubborn to look at the history and not repeat it.
- duped 3y agoI mean Discord, and Slack still need to run on non-Apple devices.
- samuelstros 3y agoChrome supports "installing" apps for a long time. Apple is the blocker for true web apps with the year long lack of notifications for example.