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Oh wow, It's exciting to see this pop up on HN. I'm Dave, founder of ToDesktop. Feel free to reply to this and I'm happy to answer any questions :).

by davej 3y ago

Lightbody 3y ago
Nice work! Do you have plans to bring the same low friction deployment to mobile?
- davej 3y ago
  Not currently, there's still a lot to do with the desktop platform!
ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
Good luck, Dave. For myself, I develop native (Swift) apps for Apple devices, and have not found hybrid approaches practical in my own work, but there have been great points made by folks from all sides, in this post.
- davej 3y ago
  Thanks for the kind words Chris! I completely agree.
gwbas1c 3y ago
> Is ToDesktop For Me? > If you want to make a desktop app of a website for your personal use, ToDesktop is overkill. I just want to point out that a lot of us "pros" learn how to use tools like this by semi-personal use. Therefore, you might want to consider a free personal version that's crippled in a mildly annoying way: For example, no installer, don't sign the app, and have an easily-ignorable nag. (Therefore creating a situation where if I tried to distribute one of these applications for a commercial product it looks unprofessional.) It creates a great way to "try before you buy," and it has another effect: Free consumer use of ToDesktop can make it a "household name" when developers need to use a tool like this. I should point out that I've been doing this for at least a decade: I used to use https://fluidapp.com/ https://fluidapp.com/ for years until I switched to the techniques built into Chrome / Edge / Brave.
- davej 3y ago
  > Therefore, you might want to consider a free personal version that's crippled in a mildly annoying way: For example, no installer, don't sign the app, and have an easily-ignorable nag. (Therefore creating a situation where if I tried to distribute one of these applications for a commercial product it looks unprofessional.) We basically do this. You can download ToDesktop Builder and create an app for free on your computer. You just can't sign it and distribute it to your customers. This is a good point though. We will make it more clear on our landing page.

Oh wow, It's exciting to see this pop up on HN. I'm Dave, founder of ToDesktop. Feel free to reply to this and I'm happy to answer any questions :).

by davej 3y ago

Oh wow, It's exciting to see this pop up on HN. I'm Dave, founder of ToDesktop. Feel free to reply to this and I'm happy to answer any questions :).

Lightbody 3y ago

Nice work! Do you have plans to bring the same low friction deployment to mobile?

davej 3y ago
Not currently, there's still a lot to do with the desktop platform!

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago

Good luck, Dave. For myself, I develop native (Swift) apps for Apple devices, and have not found hybrid approaches practical in my own work, but there have been great points made by folks from all sides, in this post.

davej 3y ago
Thanks for the kind words Chris! I completely agree.

gwbas1c 3y ago

> Is ToDesktop For Me? > If you want to make a desktop app of a website for your personal use, ToDesktop is overkill. I just want to point out that a lot of us "pros" learn how to use tools like this by semi-personal use. Therefore, you might want to consider a free personal version that's crippled in a mildly annoying way: For example, no installer, don't sign the app, and have an easily-ignorable nag. (Therefore creating a situation where if I tried to distribute one of these applications for a commercial product it looks unprofessional.) It creates a great way to "try before you buy," and it has another effect: Free consumer use of ToDesktop can make it a "household name" when developers need to use a tool like this. I should point out that I've been doing this for at least a decade: I used to use https://fluidapp.com/ https://fluidapp.com/ for years until I switched to the techniques built into Chrome / Edge / Brave.

davej 3y ago
> Therefore, you might want to consider a free personal version that's crippled in a mildly annoying way: For example, no installer, don't sign the app, and have an easily-ignorable nag. (Therefore creating a situation where if I tried to distribute one of these applications for a commercial product it looks unprofessional.) We basically do this. You can download ToDesktop Builder and create an app for free on your computer. You just can't sign it and distribute it to your customers. This is a good point though. We will make it more clear on our landing page.