Is Electron really that bad? And if so, is it the same Wrapper for Windows based users?
I am seeing a lot of hate toward Electron, but I'm not a Mac user. As a Windows, I must ask if the hate is the same or is Electron better on Windows? What was the decision to choose Electron over another choice?
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For me personally the Electron implementation is the least of my concerns with 1PW8.
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@MerryBit My biggest concerns are the removal of Categories and Item Counts from the sidebar and the replacement of 1PW Mini with Quick Access which has a design only “keyboard jockeys” could love. And while I would certainly prefer a native Mac app 1PW8 is actually a very good Electron implementation from a UI and performance perspective in my view.
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I honestly was dreading using 1PW 8 with electron but it's honestly not bad at all. It's buttery smooth for me on my PC and even on 2012 Mac.
What is driving me absolutely bonkers is not being able to preview files directly in 1PW 8 . It's annoying downloading files into /Downloads/ folder (and not being able to choose that folder!). It takes extra steps to do a basic task.
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@TheCowGoesWoof I'm happy to add a little info on this. Electron is indeed used in 1Password 8 for Windows (and Linux!) as well.
While our developers can certainly better speak to the engineering decisions than I can, my understanding is that Electron chosen over other alternatives because (among other reaons):
- It makes it possible for us to unify our efforts across platforms (that is, that the 1Password app becomes more of a consistent entity, rather than entirely different codebases, with different features and stages of development and bugs that need to be addressed) across device types.
- We can lay a common groundwork we feel confident in for getting to work on considerable new features,
- and we can do this without imposing insurmountable requirements on ourselves in terms of what it takes operationally to develop the apps and support customers at the standard we believe in.
While Electron can have its drawbacks too (resource usage and security holes come to mind), we felt that we could remediate these (and have already done substantial work on this) such that Electron emerged as the best option available for what we're trying to do. That might change someday, but that's where we're at right now. 😀
And for what it's worth, we're really proud of how 1Password 8 is shaping up. It's a really strong app, and it's only going to get better.
I hope this makes some sense, and that you're enjoying 1Password 8 on whatever device you choose!
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As a Windows, I must ask if the hate is the same or is Electron better on Windows?
Windows users tend to care less about UI/UX than macOS users?
What was the decision to choose Electron over another choice?
https://blog.1password.com/1password-8-the-story-so-far/
(or $?)
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(or $?)
The shortest explanation I can give is "not budget, but design and operational effectiveness." There's quite a budget (of time and money and effort) being put into these new releases. And we hope that's evident in the quality as we go forward!
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@PeterG_1P These security holes -- will this be a problem in the future? I know and use 1Password for its security and it would suck if this became an ongoing issue some day?
I certainly care about the UI for any product but I do believe 1PW8 with Electron is good so far on Windows. For me, faster and prettier when not considering anything else. (No idea if my hardware specs have anything to do with this though.)
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We're not using Electron for the heavy lifting in our app. Instead essentially all of the non-UI elements are handled in Rust (or Swift, for macOS specific features). It would be more fair to call it a Rust app with an Electron driven UI. This significantly reduces the chances that any potential issues in Electron have meaningful impact on 1Password. Additionally we've built an (open source) Electron hardner that we're using to help reduce that chance even further.
1Password/electron-hardener: A fast and small Rust library to make Electron apps more secure.
In short: we're careful about the ways in which we use Electron, and we've also taken additional steps to reduce any potential threats. I hope that helps!
Ben
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@Ben Yes, thanks a lot for the clarification.
It really did seem (based on purely what others mentioned and the fact I have yet to read the latest news on 1Password site regarding the Electron parts) the app was rebuilt or something with just Electron. I'll make sure to catch up on some 1Password reading as I like seeing and getting to experience the improvements over time. Especially when supporting a Canadian product. :)
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Thank you @Ben for this:
It would be more fair to call it a Rust app with an Electron driven UI. This significantly reduces the chances that any potential issues in Electron have meaningful impact on 1Password. Additionally we've built an (open source) Electron hardner that we're using to help reduce that chance even further.
That's a much more incisive version of what I was trying to say. 😂 Grazie mille!
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Electron is fine. Especially for a small app like 1Password. I welcome the unified experience it will bring to our corporate users. If the resource usage becomes a problem (unlikely), then the 1Password team can consider using WebView2 instead.
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Thanks @Cartman! We're actually keeping a very close eye on Tauri Studio, who we are a sponsor of. At the moment Electron was the most suitible framework we could find for our front-end, but we will continue to evaluate as other players evolve and move into this space.
Ben
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Is Tauri mature enough ?
Great question. I had a call with Tauri founder Daniel Thompson-Yvetot a few months ago and I was telling him how excited I am to move forward with Tauri and then sheepishly said that I didn't think they were ready for us yet. His answer surprised me. Without a shred of bullshit or overselling his platform in the slightest he stated unequivocally that Tauri wasn't ready for 1Password yet.
That gave me confidence that we're sponsoring the right project and that when he says it is ready it will truly be ready.
I was excited to see the Tauri 1.0 Release Candidate released last month and hopefully they see the meteoric rise that we're all hoping for.
As for Flutter for Desktop, I don't know enough to comment on that. We played with it for mobile way back when but didn't consider Desktop as our approach was working really well. I'm sure it's changed considerably since.
The only thing constant in technology is change. 🙂
++dave;
1Password Founder0
