[stevekinney]

I haven't had a chance to download it yet, but my suspicion says it's probably an Electron application. What do you all feel about this practice of taking long-lived web applications and getting them out of a tab and into a desktop shell with a place on the dock/task bar and the ability to Atl/Control-Tab?

[joshuacc]

> What do you all feel about this practice of taking long-lived web applications and getting them out of a tab and into a desktop shell with a place on the dock/task bar and the ability to Atl/Control-Tab?

I intentionally do this with Chrome's Tools > More Tools > Add to Desktop > Open as New Window option. Wrapping Spotify Web, Outlook 365 and HipChat into their own "application"s lets me treat them as if they are native apps, but for some reason it uses a lot less resources than the actual native apps.

[aschampion]

> but for some reason it uses a lot less resources than the actual native apps.

Because most "actual native apps" now are not native apps but electron or some other HTML + JS + CSS wrapper running an entire separate browser to render the app. By running the web page as separate windows you're effectively getting the same app but sharing the browser overhead.

[303darthbobby]

You have changed my life

[Willson50]

Definitely some sort of electron app. Certain things are broken like trying to use your webcam to take a profile photo because it doesn't know how to ask for browser permissions.

I really hope this trend stops soon.

[chrisco255]

This trend isn't going anywhere. It's efficient from a human resources perspective. It is very expensive to build and maintain products across native desktop (Mac and Windows), mobile (iOS and Android) and web. That's 5 platforms. Web on its own is hard enough with probably 6 or 7 different browser platforms and various screen sizes to accommodate. Electron is a godsend, sub-native performance or not.

[noir_lord]

Agreed, also it's a case of "good enough but will get better", the more people who use electron the more its performance will improve.

I was bearish on it initially but it's starting to prove itself in a way where I'm seriously considering it.

Also as a former desktop developer who moved to the web a lot of what it does looks pretty good tbh.

That and TypeScript has completely changed my opinion of "client side" web development, it's solved so much of the pain it's unbelievable and is good enough I'd consider it for desktop development for me the killer example is vscode - proof that you can write fast applications on the platform.

[module0000]

>> I was bearish on it initially but it's starting to prove itself

Your inner trader is peeking out... :)

[aschampion]

> It is very expensive to build and maintain products across native desktop

Yet (modulo mobile) somehow companies managed to do this in the 90s with far less productive development tools. The difference is the diluted power of the consumer: when software was a purchased product made for Ks of subscribing customers, small contingents of customers being upset about subpar UI and performance was a real threat to the viability of your business. Now Outlook or any Amazon app can be absolute slow, buggy garbage on nearly every platform (and they are), but the enormous customer base (diluting collective action) and entrenchment of locked-in platforms and data mean there's little incentive to obsess about product quality. Instead companies prioritize cost reduction, new customer acquisition (focusing on product chrome refreshes instead of robustness), or just give over to development momentum apathetic to quality.

[BoorishBears]

> modulo mobile

That's cutting out a huge bit of functionality.

> small contingents of customers being upset about subpar UI and performance was a real threat to the viability of your business

Only if there was a better alternative available, there was still plenty of garbage software. If someone made a product like Outlook with the backing that MS can provide, but better performing, everyone would use it. Case in point, G-Mail

[chrisco255]

In the 90s you could get away with making a Windows desktop app and call it a day. No one expected your web site to have all the same functionality as your desktop app. And mobile apps weren't a thing. Mac was also a small enough portion of the market to ignore for many products.

[danso]

> I really hope this trend stops soon.

In what way? That services stop trying to be desktop applications and live on the web and web browser? Or that Electron itself is not an adequate framework for cross-platform development?

[seanalltogether]

Notifications are always the killer feature for me on desktop and it's one of the main reasons i don't use gmail/hangouts/google calendar in the browser. Sure you can keep them open all day in a browser window, but i don't want permanent browser windows open all day.

[itp]

I exclusively use those applications inside the browser and I have had no complaints about notifications. They ask for permission, I grant it, and I get (native, at least on OS X) notifications that match the rest of my system.

Genuinely curious, is there something I'm missing out on / some way they work better out of the browser?

[alkonaut]

Useless. I'd pay for many web apps to bring a snappy native experience, but if an app is slacklike I won't use it even if free.

Maybe I'm missing the key point of a desktop Trello - what does it do that can't be done on a webpage?

[dpflan]

I haven't downloaded either. You mentioned "out of a tab" and 'Atl/Control-Tab' context switching. I usually pin such an application in the browser; this makes it easy to go visit the site (on OSX and Chrome, use CMD+<tab #>, pinning makes it one of the first tabs so CMD+1 as an example) and easy to use the browser as intended and switch back to the web-app. You could look at the memory footprint of the tab vs. the application and the performance implications of using a desktop app vs. the web-app. That could be useful info. :)

[bengale]

I'm not sure anyone thinks its ideal but there is certainly software built with it that just wouldn't otherwise be, no matter how many people talk about Qt on here.

[pjmlp]

I don't mind.

Electron is just kids re-discovering MSHTML.dll.

[rorykoehler]

Pointless. Works great in the browser. Won't install this

[jbob2000]

It's an inevitable step for any mature software application. At some point, the business side will want a feature that web browsers won't allow or have poor support for. Initially, developers push back and this feature gets delayed, but sure enough, executives get eager and eventually make the call to build a desktop app.

I have seen this twice now; our file transfer service was being hindered by poor file API support by the browsers, so we built a desktop app to wrap the web app and provide better file access. And for a shopping app to get around iframe restrictions.