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Comment by hitlin37 | Hacker News Reader

nice to see node-webkit in a new form. nw.js looks to be the right tool to write cross-platforms apps. I used some of the apps written using node-webkit and they run great on ubuntu/linux. I've been thinking of re-writing an old application (written using xulrunner) into a nw.js app. Since i'm new to nw.js, its probably good to ask here. As i understand node suits for the application where I/O are required. My application talks a lot from hardware such as getting setting files using network, sending status over the same. The application has its own protocol for talking over the network socket with other devices over the network. Is nw.js is a good choice for such an app?

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Seems like it is.

We use nwjs with lot of files + sqlite3[1] + bluetooth + http + child synchronization for tasks in other languages[2].

It works well, scale well, is cross-platform with changing very few of the application code (the build process is quite complex, thought).

Also, building an html with bootstrap, eventually with the chrome developer tools, takes agility to a whole new level when we speak about desktop applications.

[1] With http://bookshelfjs.org/ but http://sequelizejs.com/ is better in most cases

[2] With https://github.com/primus/primus we spawn watchdogs which run processes (via http://nodejs.org/api/child_process.html). It's very effective.

thanks for the links. sounds good to look at. Other risk part i have in application is calling hw decoders from gst api for playing mp4 videos. not sure how well that is supported in nw.js especially for intel and arm arch.

the closest example of the application i have would be some sort of kiosk for rail reservation. people come, select journey and time, do the payment and get the printed ticket. For such a scenario, i'm exploring nw.js.

But from a distribution perspective it's terrible compared to the web where you just need to type in the url into your browser. There is no central installer, that means you either have to ship NW.js(about 100MB) for every application or you have to trust your users to put it into the PATH.

yup. you are right about the size. although in my case, the around 100mb shouldn't be big problem. But i hope something comes up in nw.js that makes it smaller to distribute applications.

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