News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Electron 6.0. Parent comment

Re:Electron 6.0 by ComodoHacker on Wednesday July 31, 2019 @06:19AM (#20573030)
There are better alternatives, in almost every possible way. The problem is they aren't that popular. And you can't reuse code (and coders) with web version of your app.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Electron 6.0 by wongarsu on Wednesday July 31, 2019 @06:46AM (#20573170)
What are the better alternatives?

Personally I'm a fan of C# with WPF, but while C# is decently cross-platform with .net core WPF is Windows only.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Electron 6.0 by KptMarchewa on Wednesday July 31, 2019 @08:42AM (#20573924)
You cannot possibly suggest that TK is a better alternative to anything.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Electron 6.0 by sramsay on Wednesday July 31, 2019 @08:54AM (#20573999)
God, or Swing! Please, for the love of all that is good, do not show this list to any manager. Ever.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Electron 6.0 by pjmlp on Wednesday July 31, 2019 @01:25PM (#20576353)
Swing is quite good.

A good manager will ensure everyone has actually read Filthy Rich Clients, is aware of Swing theme component libraries and never does IO on the UI thread.

And for bonus points, that the team gets hold of an Java AOT compiler to native code.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Electron 6.0 by mustardo on Wednesday July 31, 2019 @10:56PM (#20580762)
Is it really that much worse than HTML, JS, and CSS? The DOM is generally a mess and CSS isn't easy to use.

Of course JFX is probably a better option now days but for a small GUI if you avoid layout managers like GridBagLayout (built to work with a WYSIWYG) and you are on the JVM seems like an easy option to me

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Electron 6.0 by rhabarba on Wednesday July 31, 2019 @09:10AM (#20574107)
Why not?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Electron 6.0 by oblio on Wednesday July 31, 2019 @09:16AM (#20574161)
How do you make a good looking app with Tk? I know about Tile and Ttk, but how can I even trust those when the Windows look and feel they mention is that of Windows XP? Launched in 2001, abandoned by Microsoft in 2014 (!)

http://tktable.sourceforge.net/tile/screenshots/windowsxp.ht...

https://www.tcl.tk/man/tcl8.5/TkCmd/ttk_intro.htm

I wouldn't base any commercial product I'd make on Tk, if it was meant for a large audience. Internal tools where you get to tell you users: "shut up and use the ugly app cause management already paid for it", ok, there you can use it. Otherwise... no.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Electron 6.0 by rhabarba on Wednesday July 31, 2019 @09:19AM (#20574187)
There is no common definition of "good looking".
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Electron 6.0 by hombre_fatal on Wednesday July 31, 2019 @10:09AM (#20574525)
Ask people off the street instead of HN developers who like to pretend their undesigned weekend project looks good just because it almost works, and you'll find consensus more common than you think. Or even better, how unanimous the consensus is on what looks like shit.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Electron 6.0 by oblio on Wednesday July 31, 2019 @09:20AM (#20574191)
True, but there is a common definition of "outdated". Tk looks outdated.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Electron 6.0 by rhabarba on Wednesday July 31, 2019 @09:23AM (#20574215)
Design is expensive and not always an important part of a desktop application which should "do the job".
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Electron 6.0 by oblio on Wednesday July 31, 2019 @09:26AM (#20574238)
If it's internal software, yes. If you're making it for a mass market, it's a super important part.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Electron 6.0 by CDSlice on Wednesday July 31, 2019 @10:09AM (#20574531)
I'll take a slower, better looking Electron app over a faster, dated looking Tk app any day.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Electron 6.0 by rhabarba on Wednesday July 31, 2019 @10:14AM (#20574575)
Function follows form, I see.

How about a dated looking Electron "app"?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Electron 6.0 by edflsafoiewq on Thursday August 01, 2019 @09:00AM (#20583324)
It doesn't work with my IME last I checked.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Electron 6.0 by ComodoHacker on Wednesday July 31, 2019 @11:24AM (#20575131)
Sciter [0], for example. It's similar to Electron, but not compatible with web standards. And 1/10 resource consumption.

0. https://sciter.com/

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Electron 6.0 by cpursley on Wednesday July 31, 2019 @09:46AM (#20574367)
https://github.com/revery-ui/revery

Cross-platform desktop apps with reason

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Electron 6.0 by dgellow on Wednesday July 31, 2019 @06:38AM (#20573122)
Alternatives that are supported cross platform? That’s the only reason I would potentially consider Electron.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Electron 6.0 by solarkraft on Wednesday July 31, 2019 @07:32AM (#20573445)
Among the easiest and best supported is Qt. I think Flutter is also going to serve that space decently well (although in a more Electron-like fashion, meaning no/barely any integration into the platform-specific UX, while Qt imitates OS widgets).
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Electron 6.0 by davojta on Wednesday July 31, 2019 @06:43AM (#20573150)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_Embedded_Framework is support linux, windows and macos
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Electron 6.0 by wongarsu on Wednesday July 31, 2019 @06:50AM (#20573194)
With CEF you can write your business logic in a better language, but the UI suffers from the same problems as Electron since it's basically the same thing.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Electron 6.0 by rhabarba on Wednesday July 31, 2019 @08:21AM (#20573783)
Language-independent: - IUP (supports Windows, GTK+, and Motif) - libui (supports Windows, macOS, and GTK+)

Language-dependent: - Lazarus/LCL - Common Lisp/McCLIM

[ Parent | on HN ]