Show HN: JSPaint.exe – MS Paint as a cross-platform binary

github.com

20 points·graderjs··5 comments

Just tried this, expecting it to function like an electron app. Did not expect it to pop open a node console and start to force install Chrome. It'd be nice to use this without being forced to install Chrome. Maybe see if there's a way to use Firefox or at least Brave instead of Chrome

I wonder how big is the size difference of the binary. Original app is surely many times smaller as usual.

I'm guessing the original binary would be under 1Mb probably around 220 Kb, but i don't know.

Which makes this 10 to 50 times larger. Still, better than Electron by 10 times, 10 Mb versus over 100. But not as full featured, well tested, well supported or popular.

Wait, if this doesn't use Electron how are you rendering everything?

Yes that's the main draw card. I probably should have made the title

... without Electron hehe

I use Grader, my cross platform app builder. It's weird, it's got many downloads on npm since i posted it 2 days ago, but not many stars. People using it in secret! Whereas another npm project I did has many stars but few downloads.

I suggest you consult the Grader docs[0,1] for how we render, but the short of it is, we do use Chrome to render, we just don't package it in the binary. We use the system Chrome, or... grader downloads chrome once if it's not installed, and that is used for all grader apps.

[0]: https://github.com/c9fe/grader-base/blob/master/README.md#go...

[1]: https://github.com/c9fe/grader-base/blob/master/README.md#cl...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com