Not sure why sciter gets ignored in this space. It's very lightweight in comparison to anything chrome is doing (even a hand carved cef build is 15+MiB) supports react and angular, uses GPU compositing and has been commercially supported for nearly a decade.

> Not sure why sciter gets ignored in this space.

Because it's proprietary software, and $8,600 gives you the right to request features and see the source for a year.

It's free in binary form, $310/yr in source form for Windows, and $620 for cross-platform added to that. Given how people use Electron, that licensing should be fine for many use cases. The company has also been around for 10 years or so if anyone is worrying about longevity.

https://sciter.com/prices/

Ok. I get that. Still a relative term, I guess. It is easy to make reference to Electron, because people are likely to be more keen on knowing more. If you consider other Cef implementations using Winform, WPF, Chromely is still "lightweight". And it is designed with potential to be pure cross-platform like Electron.

Reason for not liking webapps - what is that reason? Because of chromium/CEF?

It's emphatically NOT lightweight. It's basically just obese, rather then the morbidly-on-the-deathbed obese that is electron.

There are a lot of potential reasons to use something like this, but having a main selling point of it being "lightweight" is just flat out lying.

Thanks for your response, but I do not get the "flat out lying" part.

What has lying got to do with a subjective definition of "lightweight". See discussion on Javascript - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39797181/why-javascript-...

What does "lightweight" really mean?

The idea that everyone sees "lightweight" and they ONLY think of Chromium size seems an ascription of "lightweight" ONLY to chromium size. I understand that has been a more common approach to chromium based solutions. This is not it here.

I have said in a few of my comments that this is simple referring to "simpler".

See a definition of "lightweight" from wikipedia:

A lightweight programming language is one that is designed to have very small memory footprint, is easy to implement (important when porting a language), and/or has minimalist syntax and features.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_programming_langua...

So if we replace "lightweight programming language" with Chromely, while the small memory footprint, may be arguable false, it is however easier to implememt and minimal features. Note the "and/or" part.

Ok, I'll retract that statement.

Corrected:

There are a lot of potential reasons to use something like this, but having a main selling point of it being "lightweight" is just flat out lying or willfully misunderstanding what lightweight means.

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Javascript, and all scripting languages in general (maybe excepting lua and similar) are fundamentally not lightweight. They require enormously complex runtimes.

I'd say a reasonable definition of "lightweight" for an application runtime is if a complete, distributable app including all the required components can fit in 1 MB (This functionally excludes things like .NET too).

There are, or course, odd corner cases (using the OS UI components, etc...), but it's broadly applicable.

Other relevant bits to being lightweight - how fast is the application to start/stop? What's the minimum runtime overhead? etc...

Thanks for your explanation. If you read my intro, you will notice that Chromely was not started as an alternative to Electron, I was trying to solve a problem and over time I realized I came up with something that can be used instead of Electron (for .NET/.NET Core).

> Other relevant bits to being lightweight - how fast is the application to start/stop? What's the minimum runtime overhead? etc...

I have not had the bandwidth to check this. My hunch is Chromely may have some edge on this. But we leave that until it is proven or not.

> There are a lot of potential reasons to use something like this ..

I thought so too, so have many developers, thanks for pointing this out.

Appreciate the feedbacks! Thanks.

More of a reason for disliking Electron apps.

Because it's a whole extra web browser, using a lot of resources (much more than a native app would).

And Chromely doesn't address that concern.

True.

The notion of Chromely not needing Node to run and may not even be needed for development should count for some difference and less use of resources, methinks.

Worse if you consider Electron.NET, you have to run a separate Asp.net server besides Node.

These are differences that made me conclude, yes, it is somewhat "lightweight" or simpler compared to them.

To me these are the advantages Chromely brings to the table.

I appreciate the feedbacks.