Hacker News Reader

Comment by thehamkercat | Hacker News Reader

I saw this post on telegram, and noticed something weird about the webpage preview

    <meta property="og:description" content="Fastmail now has native apps for Mac, Windows &amp; Linux.">

It says "native", electron is opposite of that

View on HN

I guessed it was built with Electron (or at least a WebView) even before seeing the screenshots.

Creating a fully native desktop app takes a huge amount of engineering effort. When you factor in their target platforms (Windows, macOS, and Linux) you’re looking at multiplying that effort several times over. No one in their right mind would build a fully native desktop mail app these days, unless that’s the one thing that sets them apart from the dozens of other web-based mail services out there.

The only real benefit I see in this Electron app is system notifications for new emails, assuming people keep the app running in the background or minimized most of the time. Other than that, the web version will almost always be better and more up to date, since it’s clearly the main product.

I can totally picture people buying MacBook Pros with 128GB of RAM just to run a bunch of Electron apps, hehe.

They just should help K-Mail, Evolution and Thunderbird. And provide a stable API, for “special” features. Minimal input, maximal output for all.

The Electron thing is a waste of resources for a bad application.

I assume that this app is not a mailing app, its an app to control your fastmail service, which includes email, file storage, webhosting, various dns controls, notes, contacts, billing etc. They already contributed JMAP. It would be impossible for them to get all of those features into k-mail - k-mail wouldn't want them.

And packaging the app in electron is relatively easy and a nice convenience for some users.

Honestly I just want an API endpoint to upload a new set of Sieve rules.

Once Thunderbird supports JMAP, then we should be there.

That's simply not true. "we" are misusing HTML to create applications because the tooling and distribution are so good. ReactNative / NativeScript, and probably more allow you to create apps using native or html implementations of the interface.

It's just that people start with HTML, and then it's just easy so slap Electron around it.

Think of ReactNative / NativeScript like QT/wxWidgets but they are compatible with html too

For us technical people "native" means something different than it does for regular users. It just means they have an app for their platform and not just a web app.

It's exactly that: just a web app

Most people can not differentiate between a web app in a browser and if an app they start through an icon on their computer is a wrapper around a website. People on HN who care if it’s built with Rust, Swift or an Electron app aren’t really the core audience for most companies.

It's even harder to classify as webapp if the app works offline, as electron apps often do.

Except that HN is exactly Fastmail's audience

That's a disappointment, and in the screenshots, the app actually doesn't look native at all. The new Liquid Glass design, with the round search boxes and transparency, is nowhere to be seen.

Therein lies a detraction to making native apps. Binding yourself to how native apps look now will be a liability. People will judge you as outdated when the operating system moves on to a new groove.

Sure, some work will be needed. But the Liquid Glass look starts with a recompile against the new libraries.

It's not always that simple.

That's true and I tried to acknowledge that by saying it "starts with" a recompile. There's probably a bunch of tasks that will follow.

However, now they came out with a brand-new app that shows the old OS look-and-feel.

That only applies to faux-native apps built in Electron. Actual native apps are rendered using the OS's UI toolkits, and look however the OS is configured to look.

It only says "native notifications". Or did they change the webpage?

it says "Fastmail now has native apps for Mac, Windows & Linux."

in og:description and other ":description" meta-tags (look inside dev-tools)

so you can assume that they changed the title later

Reply on news.ycombinator.com