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by ummjackson 3379 days ago
Hmm, does Electron really == "native" ??
2 comments
a85 3379 days ago
== yes but probably not ===
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Rapzid 3379 days ago
oh.snap()
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colordrops 3379 days ago
It's a native binary executable with standard access to system APIs, so in the technical sense, yes.
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Qwertious 3378 days ago
By that logic, if I fork chromium and make a custom version of it that's hard-coded to start up HN in the first tab, then I've made a native HN app.
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MadcapJake 3378 days ago
No, you've "made" a native browser that opens HN in the first tab.
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radisb 3378 days ago
By that logic Postman native is a native browser hardcoded to open only one tab and load Postman's javascript code upon start-up
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MadcapJake 3378 days ago
Basically this is true but the browser (Electron) is designed to be single-purpose (your app) and has pathways to the filesystem that you can't get in a web browser.

Also, it is treated as an application by the OS rather than a Chrome window (and all the benefits that come with that shift).

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Antrikshy 3377 days ago
But you won't have access to the file system unless you further modify it.
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josephg 3379 days ago
That just makes the platform native, which doesn't say anything at all. Presumably the app itself is still written in javascript, so its not native at all - its just bundling its own (native) copy of chrome.
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colordrops 3378 days ago
So are you saying anything with a runtime is not native, even if embedded in an executable? Is a go app native?
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meditationapp 3378 days ago
Does a go app use the native toolkit?

QT isn't native either.

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microtonal 3378 days ago
Actually, Qt (as in Qt Widgets) is a peculiar case. Qt draws its own widgets, but on some platforms uses native theming APIs to draw widgets (e.g. HITheme in macOS[1]). Though they are apparently experimenting with native widgets now [2].

So I'd say Qt is more native than e.g. Electron, but it is definitely not completely native. Except on Linux of course.

[1] http://doc.qt.io/qt-4.8/qmacstyle.html#details

[2] http://blog.qt.io/blog/2017/02/06/native-look-feel/

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meditationapp 3378 days ago
The technical sense meaning it's not interpreting some random scripting language and rendering with HTML/dom?

Because that's the meaningful sense.

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