Yeah, 'Minimal' and 'Electron' really don't go together. What is the need for a whole browser engine attached to an FTP client?

Something like a browser add-on is probably a better choice if the creator has a need to use web technologies.

Electron's footprint is rather shocking. It's essentially an entire operating system being included with each small GUI utility.

For comparison, Windows 95's install package took up 19MB of disk space. So I guess Electron's 50MB is pretty efficient as far as operating systems go.

At what point do we get an Electron runtime that can be distributed (and kept up-to-date) separately from the apps using Electron?

.NET does this, Java does this, DirectX does this, etc.

Run a webserver on localhost that only accepts local connections (most golang utilities with GUIs do this) or use a sain UI framework.

I have wondered this for some time. Why is making a common runtime for Electron so difficult?

Looks like it is currently being worked on: https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/673

It's unavoidable with Electron. I'm working on minimizing it as much as I can, but the electron base itself is 98% of the weight.

> It's unavoidable with Electron.

I think that's the point that they're making: Electron, due to its nature, isn't an optimal choice to build something that ought to be a small tool.

This is obviously a kind of "hello world" learning experience for you, and I'm sure it'll be a useful stepping stone to work toward more complex programs that provide better justification for the footprint. And with that purpose in mind, it's a nice start. I personally don't care for some of the UI paradigms that are fashionable right now (the "flat" and "minimal" stuff), but this seems like a sane implementation of that style.