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Zekio

is this a potential electron competitor/alternative?

Edit: Electron really needs a competitor/alternative

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Not exactly, but there was an Electron-compatible prototype for a bit, called Positron.

Myk wrote about taht as well: https://mykzilla.org/2017/03/08/positron-discontinued/

Well on second thought I guess qbrt is more or less trying to solve the same problem as Electron, without being compatible as it is "simplifying the process of developing and packaging a desktop app using web technologies."

There is nw.js:

https://nwjs.io/

I used it to port a frontend for an application that requires multiple toplevel windows and found its API way easier for that particular problem.

Edit: also a rather informative statement by the author on the relationship between nw.js (which used to be node-webkit) and Electron:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/nwjs-general/LIrC7zH...

+1 for nw.js...Electron is just a bloated version of nw.js

Actually I tested both with a hello world app just this week and nw.js used more RAM than electron

Electron apps display misleading RAM statistics in Task Manager, at least on Windows. There are multiple content processes that you have to compare paths to find.

> Electron really needs a competitor/alternative

http://sciter.com - single dll/so of 5mb - embeddable HTML/CSS engine designed specifically for running desktop UIs.

Never heard of this. I wonder why it's not more popular?

Probably licensing + pricing.

not open source, for one. looks interesting, and it might be a pragmatic choice if you're a company developing a desktop app, but for a hobbyist programmer i see no real appeal in a closed source framework.

https://sciter.com/prices/. It has a free binary-only tier. Not entirely sure what the restrictions are. I also don't quite get their renewal pricing - it's not cheap at all.

There's a little known Microsoft framework that allows html and JavaScript to be compiled into an exe using ie, but its so obscure I couldn't find it after five minutes of googling. And obviously it's not cross platform.

HTA?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_Application

That's it, thanks.

Maybe Microsoft should re-market it to the Electron generation, and eventually bring back Active Desktop as well.

You cannot find much about it, because it was an IE 6.0 based technology, when "Electron apps" were the IE ActiveX engine bundled as .exe.

I actually liked active Desktop. You could have animated wallpapers and system information embedded on your Desktop back in windows 98, it was a shame it got removed. Nowadays you have to use rain meter if you want to do any of that stuff

It is called Qt, wxWidgets, JavaFX, Xamarin.Forms,....

You forgot GTK. I think he meant that electron had dominated the JavaScript-on-the-desktop scene

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