In my experience, Electron apps tend to be bloated, not very performant and/or energy inefficient. This means that developers make a choice regarding users' disk space, user experience and battery life.
The extent to which users notice any of this is of course dependent on a combination of their machine (e.g. old/new hardware, laptop/desktop) and the application being run.
Also, since you don't use the platform's native widgets, there's poor (or nonexistent?) accessibility features for users with special needs - not to mention the implications (HCI-wise) of redefining/replacing standard interface elements.
In my opinion, all this reeks of poor design, and is arguably (in some cases) downright user-hostile and unethical.
To portray it as "native" is, frankly, ridiculous.
Why:
The main thing Electron does well is lower the barrier to entry and maybe increase development speed.
I can definitely see use cases, such as quick prototypes and internal applications. And it is cross-platform. There's probably other good reasons to use it as well.
Comments
Why not:
In my experience, Electron apps tend to be bloated, not very performant and/or energy inefficient. This means that developers make a choice regarding users' disk space, user experience and battery life. The extent to which users notice any of this is of course dependent on a combination of their machine (e.g. old/new hardware, laptop/desktop) and the application being run.
Also, since you don't use the platform's native widgets, there's poor (or nonexistent?) accessibility features for users with special needs - not to mention the implications (HCI-wise) of redefining/replacing standard interface elements.
In my opinion, all this reeks of poor design, and is arguably (in some cases) downright user-hostile and unethical.
To portray it as "native" is, frankly, ridiculous.
Why:
The main thing Electron does well is lower the barrier to entry and maybe increase development speed.
I can definitely see use cases, such as quick prototypes and internal applications. And it is cross-platform. There's probably other good reasons to use it as well.