@heiglandreas The "native" terminology definitely is misleading.. It's just a wrapper around Electron which has been around forever, so nothing new there. But! The fact is that it unlocks a new market for PHP devs (self-contained applications that run on the desktop without the need for an internet connection). That's a whole new world opening up for some people, so I can see why they're having fun with it, and I disagree with your statement that it shouldn't be given a chance.
But when you are using Electron under the hood for a self contained application that doesn't need the internet, then why not use JavaScript and manipulate the DOM directly and use the asyncronous possibilities directly...
In the end it's nothing else than a PWA without internet....
@heiglandreas Valid points, but I was specifically talking about PHP devs here, not JavaScript devs. Of course if you're comfortable with JS & Node, you're better off using Electron directly. But I've seen a lot of PHP devs who are clueless about "front-end” tech including JS, and this tool is actually useful for those people. Sorry for taking issue with your comment, just seen a lot of negativity around here and it's been bringing me down 😅
@heiglandreas The way I see it, if a piece of tech can solve a problem for someone somewhere, then it's totally valid, even if there's better options around for people who have different skillsets. I wish more people would consider that before bashing a tool/framework/etc, which I see all the time.
I don't want to judge or even bash people using the tool!
And when you use PHP for serverside rendered views: Go for it!
But most of the applications I know use a dedicated serversided PHP backend and a dedicated clientsided HTML/JS/ CSS frontend. And as we are not using a serverside...
@void But if I wanted or had to create a professional, platformindependent app, I'd use Electron with one of the well known JS frameworks like React or Vue.
@heiglandreas I think the theoretical idea would be to make an existing application installable on the desktop machine, without installing and configuring a webserver and dealing with ports and certificates and stuff and not to write applications specifically for that.
However I am missing the applications where this makes sense, considering backend needs.
Conceptually similar to Slack&co bringing the frontend code into an installable package ... but also shipping the backend.
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