• Bipta@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    35
    ·
    1 year ago

    This meme is really only true for things like Slack where the app is just the webpage in an app, and even then it’s not quite true because Electron is a lot heavier than a webpage because it has to now run the webpage and the app - which I think is terrible.

    But then also, Electron enables actual apps to be developed using web standards - which I think is great.

    TLDR: Use Electron to make apps, not glorified webpages.

        • habanhero@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          Calling Slack a webpage is like calling an office building a room.

          Slack is just as much a complex app as anything else even if it’s built on web tech and standards.

          • Ethan@programming.dev
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            1 year ago

            The point is that Slack does not take advantage of Electron at all. It’s no better than running it in a browser.

            • habanhero@lemmy.ca
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              For Slack it does. Building an app via Electron means it’s cross-platform by default, so Slack doesn’t need to invest in separate platform teams to solve the same problem (Windows, macOS, Linux).

              Electron also has better support for things like native notifications, video and voice calls, offline capabilities, and to other native APIs etc that are either unsupported or spottily supported via the browser.

                • habanhero@lemmy.ca
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  It has all this support for native platforms yet it’s always a clunky memory hog

                  Maybe so but it has improved a lot over time. The app devs share some responsibility too so it’s not all on Electron.

                  zero effort to respect the design language of the OS it’s running on.

                  That’s the Dev’s design choice, not a limitation of Electron.

                  I’m on macOS, I want the app to be a native macOS app. If I wanted it to look like a webpage, or Windows, or Linux GTK then I’d switch to one of those and expect it to match those paradigms.

                  I don’t disagree but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter to enough people for it to become an issue. People are used to Slack and the way it works.

                  Moreover the cost of building the same app 2x or 3x simply doesn’t make business sense.