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Kibranoz

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You do realize that PWA support on MacOS Is a 100% and on par with windows right?

You can get edge or chrome on Mac too.

The problems with WebKit compatibility is more about the functionalities, which is what framework like tauri try to adresses.

Look, I will concede that maybe there’s some specific app where electron really make sense, but there’s no way that applies to all the apps. There’s no way that Trello needs electron, there’s no way that your new pomodoro app need electron. There’s no way postman needs electron too cause there’s literally some people who made an open source PWA version of it, and to get local host support you can just get their chrome extension.

It is no longer : it’s better than no app, cause there are definitely way better alternatives for most electron use cases.

I’ve also downloaded chrome less, which enables me to get a wrapper for figma and Trello. I choose to make them use my safari browser, and both of them takes way less space and are reaaallly faster.

No,

You might have the best developers around but using electron will always make your app worse. It bundles all of chromium which is an outrageous waste of space. Chromium in itself is really ram intensive and the new contributions of Microsoft edge to chromium aren’t even added there anyway.

If you need a web front end make a progressive web app and use web assembly technology. Or use a lighter framework like neutralino or tauri JS. You do not need to bundle chromium in every single application.

Open Web Advocacy 4 years ago

As much as I love the web I feel like there may be some problems. What would entail to allowing anything run on the web? Bluetooth, hardware, movement tracking api (creepy!!) are causing legitimate concerns.

The web was meant to be an information sharing platform. To share information means that there was standards to be built. From these standards, came the possibility to make things that works everywhere, which explains the popularity of web apps.

It may be tempting to push for more support in web standards, however the nature of the web platform give it vulnerabilities that wouldn’t exist in a native app.

A native app is a piece of code. You can analyse it through antivirus, and the executable stay the same unless you choose to update it. (Electron apps allow app maker to update automatically, but they are not native apps, the chrome browser embedded is native but the only website it can access is not). A web app use multiple devices and is more uncertain. Service workers fetch information from a website and on a remote server, and that code would arrive on your computer without you actually consenting or realizing it. What if my website get attacked and suddenly my web app is loading a Bluetooth api that could access a connected object, like my smart car, my health device or other potentially dangerous stuff?

Moreover, allowing alternative browser would allow developers to be less constrained by Apple, for the better, indeed, but also for the worst. If chrome decide to bring their chromium browser to iOS, Facebook could just delete it’s iOS app and put it as a chrome PWA, this would allow them to bypass the Apple Store restrictions.