Show HN: Photino: Native, Cross-Platform Web UI Desktop Apps

tryphotino.io

5 points·vxNsr··3 comments

"Photino uses the OS’s built-in WebKit-based browser control for Windows, macOS and Linux."

So it has the same problems as the rest of the web when it comes to rendering issues. I know Electron gets bad press cause of memory hogging, but controlling the view is essentials so all users have the same experience.

I agree, ish. I had the same opinion as you, but as someone recently pointed out most of these things are hooked directly up to web portals anyway - of which already support all major browsers.

I then realized that i too wanted pixel perfect behavior, but my Electron app was still going to be hooked up to a web API where i intended to support all browsers. So in a lot of cases i have to ask, why waste users memory?

In one application of mine i have a reason, though. Bells and whistles; Electron has a lot of them. Eg i want a tray dropdown - Electron has it. I want a popup text input (center of screen), Electron has it. Etc.

Tauri (and i assume Photino) are pretty attractive for most apps. But i feel like the argument of "But my pixel perfect!" loses water when so many apps are already supporting all the browsers we're discussing.

Though, it does if you're a chrome-only shop. But luckily many aren't - as i use Firefox/Safari/etc on Slack & Co all the time.

Hi submitter here, I'm not associated with this in anyway, just saw it pop up in my email and I know hn has been on a cross platform kick lately so I thought it was interesting that there was another electron-killer being developed.

This one appears to be based on .Net but instead of bundling chromium uses the native OS webview which many other electron-killers appear to be doing as well.

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