Ask HN: Why is electron way more popular than just using webviews?

3 points by fimdomeio 7y ago ↗ HN

Why is electron so popular while everyone complains so much about it's obvious problems? (memory usage, download size...) It seems that most platforms have implemented some form of webview that could be used to create apps that run everywhere with minimum platform specific adjustments. One example of a way to implement this is (https://github.com/zserge/webview). And even if using a webview is not ideal, there's certanly a lot of ways to at performance improvements at os level that would not be available when using electron.

Is it just marketing and politics? Is it just that there's novery little motivation to enable a cross os app environment?

I'm saying this taking into account that native apps are always light years better in a lot of ways but many time not economicaly viable if you want to target multiple os.

1 comment

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mimixco 7y ago ↗

For me, the big advantage of Electron is that the entire app, all of its dependencies, and its browser are packaged together into a single installable. This frees the developer from worrying about which browser or version the user might have. I'm not sure that it's true anymore that "native apps are always light years better." Spotify is probably the most famous Electron app. Would it be better if it were native?