For me, and probably others, the main issue with Electron isn't the speed or even resource usage. It's that it ignores common UX/UI conventions you expect from a native app which still makes me prefer native macOS apps.
Since then, I think many of us have gotten tired of looking at overdesigned sameness that by now we all know will age quickly. Programmers no longer see the sense in chasing a perpetually changing visual standard for no reason other than "BigCo said so". Most importantly though, BigCos in question have fallen out of our good graces, and the "Design Systems" they keep pushing are now regarded as nothing but cynical branding exercises that come at the cost of UX.
It's a pendulum.
As a front-end dev, I'm not entirely sure I agree with that. The DOM has some annoying performance limitations, and I'd love to be able to use something better for rendering. I think what the DOM has shown, is that cross-platform and the ability to easily do custom look and feel are crucial.
Well put!
The original point - that people would get confused from non-platform UI schemes - has been proven kind of moot since most games have their own domain specific UI schemes and people love them anyway.
They really don’t. Have you taken a look at the thriving ecosystem of native, powerful macOS apps that follow platform conventions?
I also think "professional" apps are a special case (which is a totally subjective classification). Even Apple and Microsoft have done their own thing for professional apps since forever. If I'm going to use that app for 8hrs every day, I'm more accepting of learning something new. I'm still more likely going to pick up an app if it follows existing conventions...I already chose my OS because I've learned and like those conventions.
Do you have a more modern example?
I emphatically disagree. There are still jokes (from legitimate annoyance) that the main consoles have different conventions for buttons and button names. It's awkward to navigate menu system with a simple up, down, left, right, accept, cancel when accept/cancel move around system to system. At least on desktop computers Spacebar/Enter and Escape are mostly consistent.
As for in-game control schemes, it's generally coalesced around wasd + mouse and USE. Even with that there are jokes (stemming from legitimate annoyances) about putting down a game for a week because you're older, are a parent, and have other responsibilities, then having trouble picking it back up.
This is a major reason I'm incredibly selective about the games I play and one reason I avoid online play. Sure, I'm one data point, and it may not apply to a majority of the cashflow for gaming, but I see it expressed online quite often.
But the thing about those is that they are 'hidden' and require memoization. There is no on-game HUD that would show legend of all the available actions all the time. If you could have that, then people would be much more comfortable about even the hidden schemes.
There are game UI:s that are mostly mouse operated, and expose the user interaction grammar using the game specific, visual UI narrative. My kids seem fine navigating between those. A great example is Roblox, which has lot of "controller heavy" games where there are custom UI:s for building and configuring lots of things.
There are no guidelines that the authors defer to, but, they organically try to make the UI:s as understandable as possible. Most of the time they copy established conventions anyway, and when they don't either the UI is still understandable or no-one will play the game.
Edit: Also as an example, Aether comes with plenty of shortcuts, or even has proper tabbing and tab highlighting for low-vision users. Electron prevents none of these, in fact the platform it’s based on, the DOM, is one of the most accessible platforms ever made in terms of support. Whether people actually make use of it it is another matter.
Examples would be shortcuts, tabbing through form fields, how a file explorer works and other small things. The file explorer in VSCode for example doesn't really behave like a native one, you have to manually refresh, you can't easily drag and drop and everything just feels a bit off.
Electron is sooo simple. I mean, we've run into some pretty interesting issues like with hardware acceleration and difference in color and font rendering between platforms, but if a guy like me can code, sign and ship a fully functional application, anyone can.
Also, I can really recommend Vue and Quasar for anyone looking at building electron and mobile apps. Really fun!
And I'd even argue that, with the freedom Electron gives you, app developers have started to actually pay attention to their design, rather than just using the standard toolkit and considering it done - so Electron apps often have better UI. I'd take VSCode's UI over Geany's any time, for example.
Yes grey text on a white background can look great on a retina screen, but does it look good across the product range from the last 7 years and all devices, lighting conditions and for people with various disabilities?
I use web apps so often that Electron looks natural