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mystes
May 31, 2006

Sapozhnik posted:

if Electron Hellworld is something that we simply must have then at least standardize it and make it part of the operating system. Make a WebPackage and WebFFI standard or some poo poo so I don't have ten different 300MB copies of Chrome kicking around.

It won't happen though because an operating system-level Chrome means operating system-level adblockers and we can't have that now can we
I don't think this really makes sense. What you are describing is basically just webviews which already exist. There are tons of projects trying to provide electron-like experiences using webviews now for different languages like wails, tauri, and photino.

The reason that electron has been more successful is that it provides a consistent experience whereas if you just use webviews, you have to deal with inconsistencies between different platforms again.

However, since webviews are using evergreen browsers now, this may be more practical than in the past when using webviews meant dealing with completely ancient browser engines, so maybe more people will use this approach in the future.

mystes fucked around with this message at 14:52 on Oct 3, 2022

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carry on then
Jul 10, 2010

by VideoGames

(and can't post for 10 years!)

you can't have a single electron runtime on the system because then electron would be like java and all the javascript programmers have spent their entire careers being extremely smug about not being like java

jesus WEP
Oct 17, 2004


carry on then posted:

you can't have a single electron runtime on the system because then electron would be like java and all the javascript programmers have spent their entire careers being extremely smug about not being like java
lol

Cybernetic Vermin
Apr 18, 2005

as long as vendors actually make it *easy* to do i'd expect some convergence to happen over time pretty naturally. e.g. if microsoft dog-foods hard enough that all of their currently electron things are on one of the edge streams it'll might start looking like *less* hassle to just go along with that. and for e.g. linux it would then be pretty easy to package up the same rendering engine and be entirely compatible.

the "as long as" is doing a lot of work there though. microsoft will probably create another half-dozen alternatives and then use all of them at once, and even if not no linux project will deign packaging up a compatible runtime (as the nerd reporting of it would be that ubuntu now ships with edge).

except maybe if a game uses it and then wine ships it. then everything can just target wine.

Sapozhnik
Jan 2, 2005

Nap Ghost
yes, which is where standardization comes in. you need a standard manifest for launching a frameless webview displaying some local url and a standard ffi for calling out to an automatically-selected native code bundle for the currently executing platform from javascript. if developers have to write separate boilerplate main() startup code for every platform then they're not going to bother and will just continue using electron instead.

nodejs NAPI is pretty nice as FFIs go, maybe they should standardize that. i think mozilla came up with some sort of web bundle and web manifest standard a while back as well.

mystes
May 31, 2006

Sapozhnik posted:

yes, which is where standardization comes in. you need a standard manifest for launching a frameless webview displaying some local url and a standard ffi for calling out to an automatically-selected native code bundle for the currently executing platform from javascript. if developers have to write separate boilerplate main() startup code for every platform then they're not going to bother and will just continue using electron instead.

nodejs NAPI is pretty nice as FFIs go, maybe they should standardize that. i think mozilla came up with some sort of web bundle and web manifest standard a while back as well.
I have trouble imagining there's ever going to be a single cross platform standard for bundling native code running an http server with a webview because packaging that in a way that wasn't language/platform specific would be pretty hard

Theoretically you could try doing something with webassembly (and I'm sure people will) but you're never going to get everyone to agree on one standard

The browser companies aren't going to be interested in anything that involves native code. Theoretically you can already have an "app" experience using PWAs as long as there's no native code involved.

mystes fucked around with this message at 17:44 on Oct 3, 2022

Pile Of Garbage
May 28, 2007



Cybernetic Vermin posted:

this is btw why if you're on windows 11 you likely have two incompatible versions of teams installed. one is the one you use and the other is the non-electron one.

isnt that just the user-mode installed one and the enterprise "machine-wide" installed one, both of which are identical otherwise?

Sapozhnik
Jan 2, 2005

Nap Ghost
nodejs and electron have exactly that though, there's NodeJS' unstable C++ API and there's the new NAPI thing. Java has JNI and a few other modern equivalents. It's the same FFI on every platform though which is the important thing.

mystes
May 31, 2006

Sapozhnik posted:

nodejs and electron have exactly that though, there's NodeJS' unstable C++ API and there's the new NAPI thing. Java has JNI and a few other modern equivalents. It's the same FFI on every platform though which is the important thing.
Maybe I misunderstood what you're saying. There's definitely nothing stopping anyone from trying to replace electron with node plus a webview wrapper as long as you don't want to try to get microsoft/mozilla/apple/google to support it. Most of the projects seem to be language specific right now but I'm sure people will try to make more general purpose electron replacements based on webviews in the future.

Cybernetic Vermin
Apr 18, 2005

Pile Of Garbage posted:

isnt that just the user-mode installed one and the enterprise "machine-wide" installed one, both of which are identical otherwise?

i *believe* the "machine-wide" one is indeed an edge evergreen trial run. i think both the way it is installed and the weird integrations it has with the garbage start menu is part of the api set that "platform" offers. supposedly teams as such is a single code-base, so they shouldn't differ heavily otherwise.

Pile Of Garbage
May 28, 2007



Cybernetic Vermin posted:

i *believe* the "machine-wide" one is indeed an edge evergreen trial run. i think both the way it is installed and the weird integrations it has with the garbage start menu is part of the api set that "platform" offers. supposedly teams as such is a single code-base, so they shouldn't differ heavily otherwise.

i doubt that the machine-wide installed version is being used as a trial-run for anything as that is the specific distribution which microsoft recommends for enterprises that want to roll-out teams to their fleet via SCCM/MECM or something else. given how averse enterprises are to change it's unlikely microsoft would recommend a package that was secretly a beta-channel test mode or some poo poo.

HOWEVER the thing is that it really doesn't matter how teams is installed as the application updates itself internally. at least it does some electron update thing and then tells you to "reload the app" to finish updating. all of which im certain is just downloading new js and assets.

another thing worth mentioning is that microsoft electron apps in general still don't have proper integration with the windows UI experience. for example in win10/11 if you hover the mouse cursor over the full-screen button of either teams or vs code the little screen snapping thingo doesn't appear. this is understandable as they're not proper windows apps.

Cybernetic Vermin
Apr 18, 2005

i investigated long enough to figure out that; 1) i am correct as far as one of the two indeed being on the edge thing; 2) i am not sure which either of us are talking about; and; 3) i am wasting my life

Shaggar
Apr 26, 2006

mystes posted:

I have trouble imagining there's ever going to be a single cross platform standard for bundling native code running an http server with a webview because packaging that in a way that wasn't language/platform specific would be pretty hard

Theoretically you could try doing something with webassembly (and I'm sure people will) but you're never going to get everyone to agree on one standard

The browser companies aren't going to be interested in anything that involves native code. Theoretically you can already have an "app" experience using PWAs as long as there's no native code involved.

PWAs are a plague. This whole thing is a disaster because javascript is trash. no solution that involves javascript will ever be good. Even if you could do the impossible and convince every os dev to use a single browser runtime for all webviews, its still going to be a horrible user experience.


Pile Of Garbage posted:

isnt that just the user-mode installed one and the enterprise "machine-wide" installed one, both of which are identical otherwise?

"machine wide" teams is just the installer being placed in program files that runs and installs teams into the user's profile at first login. From there it is effectively the same teams client everyone uses. There are no shared binaries across users, its just the installer being pre-cached.

However, there is also a totally different version of teams (2.0) for windows 11 but idk what the state of it is or where it lives.

wrt webview2 itself, you can use the "evergreen" version which is basically a redistributable runtime (think directx, vc++) OR you can ship a "fixed" version of the entire package of binaries with your application. The tradeoff is automatic updating w/ the evergreen version vs guaranteed compatibility with the fixed version.

IIRC there was also an early version of webview2 where instead of the evergreen runtime you would use the runtime from the currently installed version of Edge. This was abandoned because it meant the user had to have edge installed for your app to work. It also might have just been a beta thing to try out webview2 while the evergreen package was being designed and built. There are some production apps out there that use it tho lol

for teams 2.0 idk which version of the edge runtime they're using. The big problem with evergreen is if you have a critical app that millions are using, are you gonna trust that the Edge team (and good upstream) wont break it with an update? Probably not. You're probably just gonna use the fixed version.

mystes
May 31, 2006

Shaggar posted:

IIRC there was also an early version of webview2 where instead of the evergreen runtime you would use the runtime from the currently installed version of Edge. This was abandoned because it meant the user had to have edge installed for your app to work. It also might have just been a beta thing to try out webview2 while the evergreen package was being designed and built. There are some production apps out there that use it tho lol
Doesn't everyone have to have edge installed at this point anyway?

I kind of assumed this was how webview2 worked so I'm a bit surprised that it isn't.

Shaggar
Apr 26, 2006
Edge is entirely optional so you'll run into machines that dont have it installed because it was never installed in the first place or it was uninstalled by a linux grognard in favor of adware/failfox or maybe its just blocked by GPO because your business.

Realistically this probably is a non-issue, but its something you have to deal with. A shared redistributable runtime ("evergreen") or a fixed runtime shipped with the application are both easy fixes.

The original webview uses MSHTML which is what IE and windows use internally for a ton of stuff. Even if you remove IE, MSHTML still exists so its safe to use webview on pretty much any windows with the caveat that its basically IE.

I think a better question is why they didnt ship evergreen as basically MSHTML2 with all supported versions of windows so the evergreen redist package was never a concern.

Pile Of Garbage
May 28, 2007



thank you cybernetic vermin and shaggar, now i know more about teams. also:

Cybernetic Vermin posted:

3) i am wasting my life

:same:

Pile Of Garbage
May 28, 2007



also im pretty sure uninstalling IE12 is a CIS recommendation so on windows server at least you should leave edge installed and if you still dont want it then install server core.

Sagebrush
Feb 26, 2012

edge is real good

Silver Alicorn
Mar 30, 2008

𝓪 𝓻𝓮𝓭 𝓹𝓪𝓷𝓭𝓪 𝓲𝓼 𝓪 𝓬𝓾𝓻𝓲𝓸𝓾𝓼 𝓼𝓸𝓻𝓽 𝓸𝓯 𝓬𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓽𝓾𝓻𝓮
it’s perfectly adequate

FMguru
Sep 10, 2003

peed on;
sexually

Silver Alicorn posted:

it’s perfectly adequate
mlyp

Best Bi Geek Squid
Mar 25, 2016
good: ms says they’re finally doing tabbed explorer

bad: only in win 11

Cybernetic Vermin
Apr 18, 2005

Best Bi Geek Squid posted:

good: ms says they’re finally doing tabbed explorer

bad: only in win 11

this post made me launch explorer and note that i apparently have that?!

i absolutely do not care, as the only state an explorer instance keeps is a single path, and it seems overcomplicated to have tabs for that.

git apologist
Jun 4, 2003

electron is fine you nerds

Cybernetic Vermin
Apr 18, 2005

e: nah, carry on.

Carthag Tuek
Oct 15, 2005

Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
slægt skal følge slægters gang



Gentle Autist posted:

electron is fine you nerds

its bad, op

burning swine
May 26, 2004



Pile Of Garbage posted:

trip report: very disappointed, the update installed fairly seamlessly and didn't break anything. looks the same as before.



lol, I made that

here, have a higher quality copy

Hed
Mar 31, 2004

Fun Shoe
lmao

Pile Of Garbage
May 28, 2007



nice!

e: lol it looks so good on my ultra-wide at work

Pile Of Garbage fucked around with this message at 04:58 on Oct 10, 2022

Private Speech
Mar 30, 2011

I HAVE EVEN MORE WORTHLESS BEANIE BABIES IN MY COLLECTION THAN I HAVE WORTHLESS POSTS IN THE BEANIE BABY THREAD YET I STILL HAVE THE TEMERITY TO CRITICIZE OTHERS' COLLECTIONS

IF YOU SEE ME TALKING ABOUT BEANIE BABIES, PLEASE TELL ME TO

EAT. SHIT.


so uhh I had to restart 3 times to apply the update

echinopsis
Apr 13, 2004

by Fluffdaddy
lmao imagine installing an update

echinopsis
Apr 13, 2004

by Fluffdaddy
who remembers my thread where I live posted NOT even restarting my computer for 100 days?

Agile Vector
May 21, 2007

scrum bored



i do, didn't the computer get desperate and start making more annoying update prompts or something?

akadajet
Sep 14, 2003

echinopsis posted:

who remembers my thread where I live posted NOT even restarting my computer for 100 days?

whats uptime?
nm what's uptime w/ u?

Pile Of Garbage
May 28, 2007



a common thing that im seeing in enterprise and government is forefront TMG (EoL 2009) instances running on windows server 2003 with >800 days uptime. good poo poo

echinopsis
Apr 13, 2004

by Fluffdaddy

Agile Vector posted:

i do, didn't the computer get desperate and start making more annoying update prompts or something?

initially it was, until I wrangled enough settings for it to leave me to compute in peace

echinopsis
Apr 13, 2004

by Fluffdaddy

Pile Of Garbage posted:

a common thing that im seeing in enterprise and government is forefront TMG (EoL 2009) instances running on windows server 2003 with >800 days uptime. good poo poo

this is the kind of stability our society needs

Private Speech
Mar 30, 2011

I HAVE EVEN MORE WORTHLESS BEANIE BABIES IN MY COLLECTION THAN I HAVE WORTHLESS POSTS IN THE BEANIE BABY THREAD YET I STILL HAVE THE TEMERITY TO CRITICIZE OTHERS' COLLECTIONS

IF YOU SEE ME TALKING ABOUT BEANIE BABIES, PLEASE TELL ME TO

EAT. SHIT.


our work laptops pop up a regular message nagging us to restart if we don't do it every day

also all browser tabs get closed on restart via policy and changing it prevents from connecting to the VPN

e: but then again we're on some ancient Win10 LTS version on them as well

Private Speech fucked around with this message at 10:24 on Oct 12, 2022

echinopsis
Apr 13, 2004

by Fluffdaddy
there are things you can turn off in the registry to prevent windows from taking your freedom away from you

it’s harder than ever to force windows to run without a password (so a restart takes it back to desktop) but it’s possible

Chris Knight
Jun 5, 2002

me @ ur posts


Fun Shoe
ah yes the registry, famously being very open to changes by regular users and not locked down by admins at all

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Best Bi Geek Squid
Mar 25, 2016
work IT disabled sleep mode so I have to turn my computer off like 2x / day RIP

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