Comment by galacticpony2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by galacticpony2 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> If you're going to put in the effort to write a proper desktop application with native components through Qt, .NET, Java or OpenGL or something, go ahead but please don't bother with webapps with a browser wrapper, just leave them on the web where they belong. If you need a little more integration, do it with a browser extension.

Yeah... no. I'm not that fond of using Electron apps (Atom, Slack...) myself, but I absolutely don't want them in a browser window. Writing a "native" application simply isn't an option in many cases.

> The top comment on any news article or discussion forum being something other than "great, another unnecessary Electron app that'll waste my CPU, RAM and battery".

So what? There's the same handful of curmudgeons posting that comment everywhere. That doesn't mean they're valuable as a demographic. It depends on the market of course, but if your application solves a problem that nothing else solves as well (as it should), then running on Electron is not a dealbreaker. Most ordinary users can't tell and don't know to care.

> but I absolutely don't want them in a browser window.

But that's exactly what you're getting when they're run as Electron apps. The main difference being that they consume more system resources than an actual browser window because they can't share any resources with your actual browser.

> So what?

> Most ordinary users can't tell and don't know to care.

The problem is that the complaints of CPU, RAM and battery degradation are valid complaints. I think you'll find that many users can tell that their machine has become slower or has a faster draining battery but they won't know to blame the browser wrapper for it. Take Spotify (which uses Chromium Embedded Framework) for example:

- https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Mac/Battery-Drain/t...

- https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Linux-Windows-Web-P...

- https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Mac/Again-When-will...

> But that's exactly what you're getting when they're run as Electron apps.

Well, no it isn't. If you can't even make that distinction, then having any further conversation with you is going to be pointless.

I suppose you would welcome the use of progressive web apps, but those haven't yet "arrived". If they did, I might argue for using them over things like Electron.

> The problem is that the complaints of CPU, RAM and battery degradation are valid complaints.

Many complaints about web technology are valid, that doesn't mean they invalidate its use. The reality is that even a company like Spotify would rather drain its users batteries than develop native apps. It's a tradeoff.

If Spotify followed through with your advice, those users should not be offered a desktop app at all, they should be forced to only use the website and have their browser drain the battery instead. You're effectively arguing for less choice when a native app is not an option. That doesn't make sense to me.

> Well, no it isn't. If you can't even make that distinction, then having any further conversation with you is going to be pointless.

What is the distinction you want me to make? That it has a different icon in your OS task bar?

> If Spotify followed through with your advice, those users should not be offered a desktop app at all, they should be forced to only use the website and have their browser drain the battery instead.

My argument is that by sharing resources with the browser they're running anyway, that the battery/CPU/RAM drain will be reduced. A browser is a lot of overhead and using less browsers at once is always good.

> You're effectively arguing for less choice when a native app is not an option. That doesn't make sense to me.

The reason is that these browser wrappers are marketed deceptively, so users aren't equipped to make an informed decision about whether to use them.

Users generally expect that when they download a desktop application, that it's native, has minimal overhead and performs well. Browser-wrappers don't meet these expectations. Users don't realise they're downloading an extra browser and all the overhead it entails.

If users realised that these were just another browser that can only open one website, I'm sure their feelings would be substantially different.

They think that when they download Spotify, it's going to perform like VLC or Winamp and it absolutely doesn't.

> What is the distinction you want me to make? That it has a different icon in your OS task bar?

That's one! So, it's already not exactly the same. Figuring out the rest shall be left as an exercise to the reader.

> My argument is that by sharing resources with the browser they're running anyway, that the battery/CPU/RAM drain will be reduced. A browser is a lot of overhead and using less browsers at once is always good.

You are describing one trade-off. Your argument is valid, but if you follow the links you yourself posted, it's not actually the browser engine that does all the draining, it's the content it is running (i.e. you can disable some functionality and the problem is mitigated). The base RAM overhead of running Electron compared to something like Qt isn't that big either.

> Users generally expect that when they download a desktop application, that it's native, has minimal overhead and performs well.

I don't think that's true, but even if it was, so what? Users need to lower their expectations.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com