[HN Gopher] Tauri 2.0 Release Candidate
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Tauri 2.0 Release Candidate
Author : martpie
Score : 126 points
Date : 2024-08-02 19:44 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (v2.tauri.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (v2.tauri.app)
| kayson wrote:
| I've been following tauri for a bit. It seems very cool and
| interesting but I've always wondered - what are the use cases for
| putting your app in a webview instead of using the browser?
| Everything I've thought of would work just as well.
| lwhsiao wrote:
| Is it not lighter weight?
| IshKebab wrote:
| Not lighter weight than a website because it _is_ a website.
| The only advantages are you can ship parts of your app as
| native code, and you aren 't constrained by the browser
| permission model.
| FFFXXX wrote:
| One interesting usecase is that you can run a tauri app
| without any webview windows just as a system tray icon and
| only spawn a webview window when necessary.
|
| This kind of makes it way more lightweight but only in some
| situations (obv. heavily depending on the functionality of
| the app).
| runevault wrote:
| Would this be for a service style app that happens to
| have a UI when you need to configure it? If so that's
| an... interesting idea, but considering the UI is less
| important I'd probably mind it less (as someone who is
| not a fan of Electron apps).
| pdpi wrote:
| The goal is to make a standalone desktop app with access to
| local resources, so the question is "why should you put your
| app in a webview instead of Electron or a native toolkit?"
|
| The answer is that Electron forces you to carry a whole Chrome
| installation around, which is unnecessarily heavy, and (AIUI)
| you have a node.js backend giving you the means to touch the
| actual OS, whereas Tauri lets you write Rust (YMMV as to
| whether that's an advantage). Both Tauri and Electron let you
| use a web-based interface instead of mucking about with native
| widgets, which are a pain for cross-platform development.
| cute_boi wrote:
| Additionally, we don't have to package whole node js thing.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| For example a reader app where you can't host everything on the
| server. My ebooks collection is 1TB big, and my videos are
| something like 20TB.
| epsilonfm wrote:
| For me, developing epsilon.fm with Tauri
| (https://github.com/epsilon-records/epsilon.fm) it's all about
| offering our application on platforms that our competitors
| (i.e. DistroKid) don't currently reach.
| brigadier132 wrote:
| Write once run everywhere is the holy grail of app development
| and the browser is the only realistic way of achieving this.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Can anyone explain what Tauri or webviews offer that makes them
| a good choice over a local-http-server webapps? Imo, as a user,
| Webview, no thanks. Local webapps, yes please.
|
| There really isn't a good reason for webviews or electron/tauri
| that I can tell? Why some people love love love native apps, to
| the extent they'd rather a dressed up webapps is confusing to
| me. If it's already a webapps, hell yeah give me the user-
| agency of extensions, browser history, tabs, back buttons, and
| hyperlinks or give me death! Anything but the power-stripping
| captive-audience of native apps!
|
| It would be much better to package your app as a small daemon
| that hosts a localhost webserver. The daemon can talk to all
| the system APIs it needs to. Add a desktop icon or shortcut
| that opens the localhost webpage. The daemon can present just a
| regular HTML hypertext webapps as usual, so all the usual bits
| of user-agency can slot into the overall experience.
|
| Theres a lot of usenet-related apps that work like this, that
| run as daemons, and have web interfaces. Sunshine game
| streaming too.
|
| It's be great to have some massively multi-platform http-headed
| app frameworks! That does seem semi missing, especially wrt
| mobile integration.
| TheCleric wrote:
| You are absolutely the exception there, especially if you are
| talking about an average low tech user.
| duped wrote:
| I mean there are so many reasons why you would want to do this
| it's impossible to enumerate them all. Key command overrides
| are a great example of bad behavior on the web that is
| essential to UX in a native app. Or mouse pointer control. File
| system access and other native APIs the browser doesn't expose,
| or makes a pain.
| hobofan wrote:
| You build something that needs access to to the filesystem? ->
| No other choice than a desktop app. (Chrome has some limited
| APIs around that, but AFAIK only sandboxes ones and not e.g.
| existing directories)
| flessner wrote:
| There are many things web browser can technically do nowadays,
| but aren't great or not supported in all browser.
|
| - File System (Obsidian, Logseq)
|
| - Push Notifications (IM, Social Media, Email)
|
| - USB/Bluetooth (Doesn't work in Safari?)
|
| - Global Hotkeys (Raycast)
|
| - Interfacing with other local Apps (localhost is often
| blocked)
| codeptualize wrote:
| Anything that needs os access, to name some things: menu bar
| apps, clipboard access, file system, multi window, etc etc.
|
| You can do a lot of things in the browser, but usually it's
| limited (mainly for security reasons). Having it be an app
| allows you to better integrate with the OS.
| Klonoar wrote:
| For Slack & co, being able to be on the native application dock
| (for the average user) instead of buried in a tab is considered
| a significant visibility boost.
|
| It's also something that came about from when web apps on
| desktop/PWA didn't have nearly as much reach. With e.g modern
| macOS support for PWAs you might be able to get away with just
| the web app now, depending on your target customer.
| ktosobcy wrote:
| Sadly instead of having native apps we have "web"
| monstrosities... each sporting custom "fancy" UI instead of
| following the OS native style...
| traveler1 wrote:
| Because WinUI and QT are so glamorous and offer a super
| intuitive development experience. /s
| sirwhinesalot wrote:
| Best part is that neither of those follows the "native
| style" either. There's no dark uxtheme provided by windows,
| so Qt falls back to their fusion style. Even the "native"
| light theme doesn't follow the new "fluent" style so that's
| also a shitshow.
|
| As for WinUI 3, apps are supposed to bundle it, so if you
| target Windows 11 and run the app on Windows 10, it'll look
| all rounded and drop-shadowy instead of flat like native
| Windows 10 apps. Great stuff.
| EasyMark wrote:
| I have too. I think the big deal is easy to do cross platform +
| reuse your javascript/css skills for gui + lower memory
| footprint than electron apps. I'm waiting until I see some
| major apps done in it.
| vunderba wrote:
| It makes more of a difference for the end-user then the
| developer necessarily.
|
| An end-user can continue to use your electron/tauri app for
| years after a website has long since vanished into the infinite
| void.
|
| But vunderba you think to yourself and also how did I know what
| you were thinking just call me the amazing kreskin, _" what
| about a PWA? - you can use that off-line"._
|
| PWAs give the deceptive illusion to the laymen that they're
| installing an actual application as opposed to just a bunch of
| ephemeral stuff thrown inside the user data folder of the
| respective browser.
| wubrr wrote:
| Took a look at the homepage (https://v2.tauri.app/)... and
| basically have no idea what this is or why I would use it.
|
| Consider adding something more informative than 'Hardened
| foundation for your web apps', and maybe an 'About' page.
| sshine wrote:
| I clicked "Get started..." and saw this:
|
| > _What is Tauri?_
|
| > _Tauri is a framework for building tiny, fast binaries for
| all major desktop and mobile platforms. Developers can
| integrate any frontend framework that compiles to HTML,
| JavaScript, and CSS for building their user experience while
| leveraging languages such as Rust, Swift, and Kotlin for
| backend logic when needed._
|
| This ought to be on the front page.
| wubrr wrote:
| Yeah for sure. Personally I wouldn't click 'Get started...'
| on anything unless I already know what I'm getting started
| with and why.
| dcre wrote:
| I agree. The v1 front page says this, which is ok but much
| less clear: "Build an optimized, secure, and frontend-
| independent application for multi-platform deployment."
| sva_ wrote:
| Electron replacement
| sva_ wrote:
| Oh they finally support mobile as well (at least beta.) Might be
| worth checking out again.
| srid wrote:
| Related: Dioxus
|
| > _Dioxus is a Rust library for building apps that run on
| desktop, web, mobile, and more._
|
| https://dioxuslabs.com
|
| (Dioxus uses Tauri)
| Sytten wrote:
| We just finished migrating away from Tauri to Electron for our
| desktop application after running Tauri for 2 years. We are a
| rust shop so it makes sense to use Tauri, but I can't recommend
| it for a startup use until they allow packaging a webview into
| your build. The amount of time you currently have to spend in
| debugging each OS/Version combination of bugs is simply
| untenable. This is scheduled for v3 last time I talked to the
| devs.
|
| Otherwise good progress, happy to see it!
| dvt wrote:
| I also use Tauri for a startup project I'm getting off the
| ground and I've been extremely impressed. Unless you're doing
| something extremely non-standard, I'm not sure what edge cases
| you're seeing. The webviews packaged with modern operating
| systems are very compliant (essentially Safari on MacOS and
| Chrome on Windows). The only wildcard is Linux which uses
| WebKitGTK which does have all kinds of weird quirks (but that's
| a comparably tiny market sector to begin with).
|
| Using OS WebViews, you also get the added bonus of security
| updates which you get for "free" with OS updates (otherwise you
| have to handle these yourself). There have been some RCE
| exploits in Electron, so it's something you need to keep an eye
| out for.
| Sytten wrote:
| Yup this was also our first impression. Wait until you have
| users (no snark here, but its the reality). We do have around
| 1/3 of our users on Linux and WebKitGTK is plainly bad.
|
| Our application is complex I will give you that, but it isnt
| just that. Say you want to use WASM you have to check which
| macos versions you want to support and check the oldest
| possible webview (it doesn't get updated at the same time as
| safari), check which subset of WASM that supported, etc. It
| really is a nightmare of subtitle bugs that are hard and time
| consuming to reproduce.
|
| OS webviews in our findings have a way worse update cycle
| than us shipping a new version of the app.
| lovethevoid wrote:
| Have you or your team written about the migration? Would love
| to read about that more as usually there's a lot to learn from
| these situations even when you don't make the same move.
| Sytten wrote:
| We might do it, I don't necessarily want to push bad
| publicity on Tauri since I want them to succeed in the end :)
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(page generated 2024-08-02 23:00 UTC)