In the demoscene this would be a disqualification as it's 676 bytes over the limit, but in this case I'll overlook it because of the sheer awesomeness of what you've done (and I'm sure trimming off 676 bytes wouldn't be too difficult ;-)
More seriously, this is an excellent proof-of-concept that a Slack client does not need to use hundreds of MB of RAM and consume most of a modern CPU core to provide its basic functionality. I'm a long-time Win32 programmer who started in the tail-end of the Win16 days and one of the things I've wanted to write if I had the time and need was a Win32 native Slack client, to show that it can be done with far less resources, but you've gone even further with Win16. Win32 has native TLS support (via SChannel library, not well-documented but examples exist) and you'd be able to even use it practically (32-bit applications will run on all current versions of Windows, both 32 and 64-bit.)
Note that C89 only prevents declarations of variables in the middle of a scope; you can simply create an inner scope with new variable declarations at its start. Like so...
Another small tip: if you make it a dialog-based application, you won't have to bother with WM_PAINT and drawing text yourself --- you can just make the "statusText" and "settingsText" edit controls, and use SetWindowText (or SetDlgItemText) to set their content. They will paint themselves automatically just like the listboxes that you used for the chat contents and userlist. At least you'll save some of those 676 bytes that way...
And that is why it would foolish for them to post a barebones slack client in electron. But they don't publish that. They have published a full featured client that is cross platform. I am not a fan of electron and would very much prefer a desktop app. But we are finally seeing emergence of desktop applications from major players for Linux because of electron. It's not ideal but so wasn't the previous solution.
I like the conceptual separation. I like alt-tabbing to "Slack" not "Chrome". It also doesn't have any of the header bar so the electron app has more UX control, including access to OS level window menu options. Also it can do things that you can't do inside the browser. E.g., I've seen electron apps that come with other background processes. I also think it performs better in terms of versioning/caching resources. So an electron app could be just a web-site, but they often are much more.
That's true but some of that could already be implemented in browsers itself. E.g. web page could request to be in a separate window with different icon and ask for OS-wide api permissions. Now we have to run several fully-featured browser (Elecron) instances, not sharing system libraries, under different versions. This reminds me "write once, run everywhere" Java with bundled binary JREs because of incompatibilities between vendors... But there is some progress - for example IBKR TWS client can't play sounds as it was linked with an old libavformat.so which I no longer have in the system. Browsers have most of libs statically linked.
Web pages are constrained by the functionality made available to them by the browser - which is (purposely) very limited. Electron apps run on a native JavaScript interpreter (NodeJS) and have full access to the OS.
As far as UI inconsitencies go, most libraries I have used for native apps (Qt, Swing, Tk, etc) also do not feature UI elements that are consistent with the OS. Many developers simply can't afford to support multiple UIs just because they subjectively look a bit better.
> most libraries I have used for native apps (Qt, Swing, Tk, etc) also do not feature UI elements that are consistent with the OS
Huh? Okay, maybe Swing doesn't support native-looking widgets (I have less experience with it), but I can personally attest that Qt and Tk (or more precisely Ttk) apps nowadays use a platform-native look-and-feel on Windows, macOS, and Linux alike, by default (i.e. with zero effort on the part of the app developer). It might not be absolutely pixel perfect, but it's way closer than an Electron app.
Existing frameworks like Qt or GTK could also be used for a Cross-Platform solution
And just because it's electron doesn't mean it's inherently Cross-Platform look at discord for example
It took too long for a initial desktop client to be released and then it ha issues with things like screen sharing not working as expected
Yeah but then the dev has to investigate how to solve certain patterns in Qt's ways which they already know how to solve in the web frameworks, and just like with natural languages, sometimes there are no straightforward ports for concepts, and it requires a ton of extra work that you couldn't foresee until getting halfway through the whole project. Adopting new tech is not without serious costs and risks. Also, no GUI framework I've ever seen has figured out a decent composability solution nearly as well done as the DOM, for better or worse. Not to mention the gigantic web ecosystem that just works in Electron.
Sorry, but if the way forward really is that every desktop application of the future has to ship with a full copy of Chrome, come with all the bloat and baggage of the web platform and continue its questionable UI conventions - all just because companies are too cheap to offer some training - then I really don't see how that is a desirable future.
Electron is bad enough from a user perspective, but it's downright horrible to see how it's instilled a rather defeatist approach in front-end developers.
"But I already know Javascript, it's too hard to figure out something else"
> But we are finally seeing emergence of desktop applications from major players for Linux because of electron
It's not like Maya, Steam, Chrome, Firefox, Skype, Adobe Reader, Houdini, DaVinci, Nuke, TeamViewer, Blender... haven't been working on Linux for ages (or more recently Bitwig, Reaper...). And conversely it's not like every Electron app has a linux build.
Most likely, the real solution here is to make a very highly performance tuned Electron for Wayland, and make it possible for multiple Electron apps to share at least some part of the footprint of that runtime.
Fixed costs vs variable costs. That fixed cost of Electron does come with some sizable benefits, so if you don't take advantage of them ofc Electron will just be bloat.
I think you could get pretty far without Electron. While a closer Slack experience would require some HTML rendering (VS languages have had an embeddable web view for a long time), alot of the formatting could be native (probably have to do some parsing) as could things like file uploads, image display, etc.
I can't help but agree with you. Honestly I think it went to hell when we decided that it was acceptable to call an electron app native, but that may have been a symptom, not a cause.
Some years ago I worked on a very popular Windows desktop C++ program that had to stay small and backwards compatible, which meant only Win32 APIs and homemade libraries. Designers by the dozens would be hired, then get fed up with these limitations and quit, complaining that they wanted to have the freedom to make UIs in HTML and CSS, and that users are used to interacting with Web UIs so everything should look like that.
Later, at a different job, the UI was Electron based, but designers no longer worked in HTML, they used some other tools and it had become the job of engineers to write the HTML and CSS to match.
These trends seem to be driven partly by conventional wisdom about the lowest common denominator among young people in the workforce, e.g. javascript and html are so much easier, let's build everything on those, and next thing you know those have become a given and the next crop of kids will use something new on top of that. Or maybe something like QT will win and native code will become a first class citizen again with secondary support inside browsers via WebAssembly?
Some years ago I worked on a very popular Windows desktop C++ program that had to stay small and backwards compatible, which meant only Win32 APIs and homemade libraries.
That's funny, because it's exactly the type of job I'd love doing --- and I have been working on stuff like that (native code, mostly Win32, with some hardware/drivers/embedded stuff) for a long time; if you haven't guessed already, I try to stay very far away from the web stuff, even though I know HTML/CSS/JS and can use it if needed.
I mean I am not a fan of C++ (though I don't hate it either), and I love how easy and well libraries for e.g Python works together and how easy they are to find and install, but I don't think it is necessary to go all the way to native code -- Java/Kotlin on the JVM performs pretty well (and you can always outsource the heavy parts to C).
Before Electron people had the arguments about bloated apps when it came to WPF and Qt. And Java apps, like WPF (and most Qt apps I’ve used lately) lacks true integration with native OS widgets so as a user I get an uncanny-valley feeling.
At least with Electron you’re essentially forced to style everything - and ever since Windows 8 (or Windows Vista) Microsoft has been actively uglifying native widgets.
I did consider Java as I was writing it, but at the same time Java is actually pretty fast, but there is no doubt that it doesn't use native components most of the time (there is a gnome toolkit bindings for Java, so it is possible).
Still Java feels speedy, I think because it is compiled and doesn't need wacked workarounds like not having non-floating point numbers.
There is no direct correlation between the size of an executable (64kb) and the size of the RAM usage (can be hundreds of MB). I could not find any information about the total memory usage of the application, is it described anywhere?
It feels a lot closer to write for MCUs if you write for 16-bit programs nowadays. The only difference is that MCUs are much more barebone and so less managed, but the constraints set by hardware however is the most distinctive common spot.
Super late, but the term MCU refers to the actual chip -- analogous to SoC for the main chip on a raspi.
You don't call the raspi an SoC, and it's debatable that you'd call a prototyping platform like Arduino an MCU. The MCU is the main Atmel AVR, Microchip PIC, or similar part that drives such a board.
> More seriously, this is an excellent proof-of-concept that a Slack client does not need to use hundreds of MB of RAM and consume most of a modern CPU core to provide its basic functionality.
If you’re so sure that this is possible, then where is the Electron competitor which allows us to build cross platform applications like this, with the same levels of productivity and a consistent and decent user interface?
No one needs to be convinced that a native Slack client for each platform would be much better, I wish they would build those clients. The problem is most companies can’t reasonably justify the costs of building multiple native clients when a single cross platform one is good enough.
There is Delphi and Lazarus as open-source clone of it
Lazarus can use the Windows API on Windows, gtk/qt on Linux, and carbon/cocoa on Mac.
There is also a custom drawn mode that draws the GUI directly rather than using platform apis. That also runs on Android, but it not maintained anymore, so only up to Android 5 or something
Delphi is supposed to run on Android and iOS.
And Delphi 1 ran on Windows 3.1, so you could have used the same GUI since then
There is Delphi and Lazarus as open-source clone of it
Shhh! Ixnay on the Lazarusay. If people find out, I'll lose my magical secret weapon for blasting out little windows gui apps.
Seriously though, if you ever find yourself needing a few buttons on a windows desktop that do simple things, Lazarus is amazing for whipping that up in a few minutes and still looking professional.
Qt and to some extent GTK+ come close. GTK+ can be programmed in Vala which is a fine language that transpiles to C and supports idioms such as asynchronous programming.
Both are C++: developers are more expensive to hire, and stuff takes more time to develop and debug. I'm proficient in C++ (programming for living since 2000), but I wouldn't pick the language for 2D GUIs in 2019.
> GTK+ can be programmed in Vala
Picking a non-mainstream languages is risky. Harder to find developers. Way more likely to find bugs in the toolchain and these can easily cost weeks to fix.
You can also write GTK+ in JavaScript for that matter, or Python. Vala is a very underrated language though and it should be very easy for a good JavaScript programmer to pick it up.
> Both are C++: developers are more expensive to hire, and stuff takes more time to develop and debug.
Have you seen the state of Javascript 'ecosystem' and job market?? Both statements are false.
The real reason is that C++ toolkits don't have platform and device independence. HTML and CSS are really good and powerful design tools, especially compared to composing raw pixels like you'd (essentially) be forced to do with Qt and GTK.
The ignorance in this thread is rather concerning.
Let me correct: GTK+ is not C++, it's C. Qt is very cross-platform: it supports about 10 platforms, including Linux, Windows, and macOS. You are not doing anything close to compositing raw pixels in Qt or GTK+. They have layout managers that are specifically made for typical application UIs, and they have lots of ready-made widgets. Qt also has QML, which is a declarative UI descriptions language kind of like HTML/CSS but much more productive because (gasp) it's actually designed from the ground up for applications, not websites.
I mostly program for Windows and use C# for the GUI.
Cross-platform story is complicated, though. I have good experience creating a custom GUI framework for embedded Linux: drm/kms, gles, NanoVG, [DllImport], everything on top is custom C# code in .NET core 2.2. But that approach is not for everyone. I only needed 10-15 screens with simple GUI on them, it’s a 5” touchscreen with no other user-facing devices. Creating more advanced UX this way would consume too much time.
There’re Avalonia and Xamarin. Didn’t used them at that time because I needed full-screen GUI for a single-application Linux, without any desktop environments or user mode OS components. For desktops and especially mobile apps they might work OK.
It’s unpopular opinion here, but I think Electron is not that bad for GUI, esp. when writing TypeScript instead of JS. I think it’s similar story to Unity3D or PHP: low entry barrier attracted inexperienced programmers, then the whole ecosystem is judged based on the output of these inexperienced people.
I just want to step in quick to advocate. Please do not use Qt for the web. Their web export tools aren't just unfinished, they're actively hostile to web paradigms. The finished product doesn't render to the DOM, it's completely screenreader inaccessible, it overrides browser preferences. In a lot of ways, Qt on the web is even worse than Flash was.
You know all of the arguments against Electron that people trot out about how it's not real native, and it doesn't follow the right UX conventions or paradigms? Qt on the web is exactly like Electron on native, except way worse and without any sign that it's going to improve, because fundamentally Qt is structured around the idea that it should be able to spit out a binary blob of pixels instead of hooking into web-native primitives like the DOM.
Look into something that's showing more promise, like .NET and Razor. The Rust community is also doing some good work here, although I don't know that they have any UI frameworks that are mature enough to be reliable in an enterprise setting.
These aren't true cross-platform efforts yet, since they're still forcing you to think about HTML. But if I was going to bet on any project ending up with a real cross-platform solution that felt good on the web, some kind of export option from an Open Source Windows Forms or similar is probably what I would bet on. Either Microsoft or (possibly) the Rust community are the two parties that I think are most likely to end up producing a true native UI toolkit that can actually export to the web in a usable, acceptable way.
It would have been relatively straightforward for Microsoft to support 16-bit on 64-bit, but they decided not to. I can't help but feel that that is just more evidence that whoever is running Windows development these days hates everything that used to make it a good desktop.
64-bit Windows has never supported 16-bit. This has nothing to do with "whoever is running Windows development these days"
Back when 64-bit Windows came out (with XP and Server 20003), the adoption was pretty small since most applications were not 64-bit and did not need 64-bit address spaces. Microsoft saw the opportunity to kill at least one backward compatibility burden by not even trying to support 16-bit for x64. They figured, rightly, that by the time x64 became widespread, 16-bit would be obsolete.
> This has nothing to do with "whoever is running Windows development these days"
> Microsoft saw the opportunity to kill at least one backward compatibility burden by not even trying to support 16-bit for x64.
These two statements are at odds. Microsoft used to take compatibility extremely seriously. It would have been relatively trivial to allow 16-bit applications to run, and obviously there is desire to do so since WineVDM exists, they just arbitrarily decided not to.
I suspect this is because they've become infected with developers who use Linux a lot and think nothing of breaking compatibility every release, let alone in cases like this.
Virtual 8086 mode was gone, but they could have just emulated it. The real reason 16-bit apps don't run is Microsoft didn't think it was worth the effort.
Wasn't 64-bit windows 2k/64 itanium-based, not x86-based? If so it would have required supporting existing binaries compiled for a different architecture. My understanding is that the only 16-bit support in 64-bit windows is a few specific loaders for things like 16-bit installers (please correct me if I'm wrong)
Yes, the initial 64-bit OS was IA64 and that was the perfect excuse to dump NTVDM, instead of trying to do a W16OW64 or something of that sort. x64 XP and 2003 further solidified that decision because they were "professional" SKUs and Microsoft could dictate that they didn't care about DOS/Win16 for the "new" platform.
> Write your apps in Python and release them on iOS, Android, Windows, MacOS, Linux, Web, and tvOS using rich, native user interfaces. Multiple apps, one codebase, with a fully native user experience on every platform.
This sounds great, but it seems there's no out-of-the-box support for a rich text textbox?
I have a python script that I want to deploy as self-contained app for windows and osx with a gui. Finding a framework that works, is decent to use, doesn't need hundreds of MBs of dependencies, and has rich text support is...not easy.
I'm still trying to figure out if there's a GUI that supports different text with mixed colors and features out of the box, and that's not horribly broken in OS X
Actually, s/Slack/Tidal/ if you want to add insult to injury. Electron app for Windows and Mac (but well, nice features overall). However, no Linux build.
Slack does have (very-long-time-beta) Linux build[0], though I personally prefer to just use Slack through my browser instead of suffering through an Electron app.
It was more or less a rethorical question (I guess that’s why I’m being downvoted), because there is no competitor. If there was, then Electron wouldn’t be so extremely popular in the first place, and we’d see a lot more popular apps made with all the tools mentioned in the other replies to my post.
Thanks, I'm assuming there is some core application capability that people are getting from Electron. In terms of 'write once run anywhere' Java has that covered but doesn't offer a means to spec UIs with HTML/CSS, so if that is the deal killer then it would be nice if Java added that capability for applications.
Edit >> looks like JavaFX WebView is a thing now, plus the jxbrowser embeds chromium in a Java App... not sure of the performance of either of these implementations
That's the biggest lie ever, with these newfangled "cross-platform" solutions.
I want to watch the guy who has to sit down and port electron to a platform it doesn't run on yet. It's just a few lines of code, right?
Java had the same problem, everyone who ran Linux in early 2000s remembers. It's still not something I would want to port, but at least it runs on more systems ootb than electron.
You are being downvoted because the idea that electron is the only way to get cross platform GUIs is absurd and comes from inexperience and a lack of research. FLTK, Juce and Qt are just some of the options for creating cross platform UIs that end up being much smaller and MUCH faster than electron. Electron is popular because people learn javascript and don't want to learn C++. I can't completely fault this mentality for toy programs, but at some point the false sweeping statements get pretty old.
It's weird to assume that developers who use Electron do so because they are ignorant, incompetent and lazy.
The truth is, everybody knows about Qt, GTK and so on, and everybody knows Electron is heavy but you have to be realistic. As a company do you want to spend that much money hiring a ton of C++ developers over a much longer period of time, or do you go for the solution which, while not ideal, allows you to develop a cross platform app in a much shorter time?
These days many people run Electron apps without even knowing it, showing that it's an ok solution.
> It's weird to assume that developers who use Electron do so because they are ignorant, incompetent and lazy.
I don't think I said all that
> As a company do you want to spend that much money hiring a ton of C++ developers over a much longer period of time,
This I think is a big assumption. Making a GUI isn't really that difficult. Most of the time in a program doesn't go into making the actual UI. I never hear someone who is experienced in making UIs say that electron saves them so much time, it is always people assuming it takes an army of C++ people to do what one person can do with electron, which is bizarre, especially over the course of something that is more than a prototype.
If you don't know the difference between "inexperience and a lack of research" and "ignorant, incompetent and lazy" then I don't know what to tell you. It seems like you are hallucinating some sort of persecution.
It is not a big assumption, I've done it many times. What is it that you think electron gives you that cross platform GUIs don't have? Making the actual UI is usually pretty trivial, it isn't even logic, just data through function calls.
I think misunderstood what I said - I can understand not learning C++ for toy programs, but at some point making thousands of users use an electron program is pretty silly.
Sure, I’m just saying there is a huge gap and other tools, even though they technically work, haven’t proven to be good enough to become as widely adopted as Electron.
In the demoscene this would be a disqualification as it's 676 bytes over the limit, but in this case I'll overlook it because of the sheer awesomeness of what you've done (and I'm sure trimming off 676 bytes wouldn't be too difficult ;-)
More seriously, this is an excellent proof-of-concept that a Slack client does not need to use hundreds of MB of RAM and consume most of a modern CPU core to provide its basic functionality. I'm a long-time Win32 programmer who started in the tail-end of the Win16 days and one of the things I've wanted to write if I had the time and need was a Win32 native Slack client, to show that it can be done with far less resources, but you've gone even further with Win16. Win32 has native TLS support (via SChannel library, not well-documented but examples exist) and you'd be able to even use it practically (32-bit applications will run on all current versions of Windows, both 32 and 64-bit.)
Note that C89 only prevents declarations of variables in the middle of a scope; you can simply create an inner scope with new variable declarations at its start. Like so...
Another small tip: if you make it a dialog-based application, you won't have to bother with WM_PAINT and drawing text yourself --- you can just make the "statusText" and "settingsText" edit controls, and use SetWindowText (or SetDlgItemText) to set their content. They will paint themselves automatically just like the listboxes that you used for the chat contents and userlist. At least you'll save some of those 676 bytes that way...