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Comment by rralian | Hacker News Reader

There are two things here. WordPress.com has been rewritten as a SPA written in React, communicating with the back-end via REST-API. That codebase is now open source for anyone to review and hopefully learn some neat things about scaling a really big React application (or even better, teach us a few things). That codebase is here: https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso

Secondly, Automattic has also launched a desktop app (osx for now, but linux and windows forthcoming) that makes use of this new codebase... which is possible now because everything is now going through our REST API.

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The desktop app is using Electron, the same framework used by Atom, Slack and Visual Studio Code and others to bundle up a JavsScript app + Chromium to be a stand-alone desktop application.

The main benefit of this is speed having the entire app local it makes it really fast. As we continue to develop the app, we'll build in more desktop options and features.

Plus its easier to launch and switch to when its an app in your dock instead of just a tab in your browser.

"Plus its easier to launch and switch to when its an app in your dock instead of just a tab in your browser."

If every website I visited refused to be in a tab and instead required its own place on my launcher... well, my desktop would be about as useless as my smartphone launcher. 100 applications spread across 8 separate pages, who knows what's open, annoying and time consuming to organize...

I really love tabs.

Are we really killing them now? Sucks to be anyone who isn't Facebook, because 98% of websites aren't going to make the "put it on the dock" cut, and will just be ignored.

Get mad at your desktop window manager, then. Tabs are a hack compensating for insufficient control of the workspace. Well, initially it was for saving memory. But we've since moved to executing tabs in their own process.

KWin used to allow title-bar level tabs but it didn't work in a lot of clients that expected to have complete control of the frame.

Actually I see tabs as a form of multiple document interface inside a single window. It's a valid approach to layering complexity as users multi task more. Excel sheets have worked this way for a long time.

Separate windows are not the only way.

I used to really love least recently used tab lists, with alt-tab switching.

That's not available in Chrome without extensions, as far as I know anyway.

>If every website I visited refused to be in a tab and instead required its own place on my launcher... well, my desktop would be about as useless as my smartphone launcher.

Thank's god it's just ONE client for ONE specific app then. Which you can STILL use through a browser.

Are rich offline capabilities part of the roadmap? For a long time I've been wondering if there would be any benefits from the Simperium project flowing to WordPress.

Yes, definitely on our list and something we're excited about. We just didn't get there for this release.

I understand the technical mumbo jumbo, my question is; what problem does this solve?

"Our existing codebase and workflows had served us well, but ten years of legacy was beginning to seriously hinder us from building the modern, fast, and mobile-friendly experiences that our users expect." - Taken from the second paragraph of the article. The reasons behind the project are explained in more detail here: http://ma.tt/2015/11/dance-to-calypso/

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