Show HN: Quark-IDE and a JavaScript runtime to build cross-platform desktop apps | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Quark-IDE and a JavaScript runtime to build cross-platform desktop apps

quarkjs.io

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20485978

I don't know if its just me, but the site runs extremely slow on a pretty well-specced desktop PC. I think there might be too much going on. I gave up trying to scroll through.

This is on Chrome 72.

That's a fairly old version of Chrome, try updating. It's working well here on Brave (based on Chromium 76) but this is on a high end computer.

A release from May 29, 2019 is considered “fairly old?” If we were talking protection against the latest vulnerabilities, fine. But for tech compatibility? I think we just found the “hell no to backwards compatibility” web developer in the crowd.

It's pretty bad in Safari as well :(

Seems fine on my iphone 6s.

It's the same story here on Firefox with Webrender (which even manages to tame the horribly unoptimized youtube).

I am sure there is some irony on some level and dimension when the first piece of text on this abomination of a site is "Lightning Fast"

Seems fine on my older Xperia Compact.

Weird, it's quite fast on an ipad mini 1.

I'd like to have videos of the screens of people saying it's fine because here's how it looks on a computer able to run witcher 3 in 4k at 60fps : https://streamable.com/6wnj0

Nicely done those who complained about dependency on the quark 'runtime' should note that it would be easy for the author to provide a 'release' button to create a dependency-free Electron bundled version that can be distributed to all.

My desktop has plenty of features that aren't exposed to the Web, so no, it isn't desktop like.

That’s not how it works. There’s a native bridge that enables you to access and use virtually any native APIs that you’d like to via JavaScript et al. If the native API that you need access to isn’t already exposed by the Electron framework, you can write the bridge code yourself

Ah it depends on Electron,....

It's a shared electron context, it addresses one of the many critiques of electron (that each electron app is an entirely separate instance of Chrome), so each "sketch" while having the capabilities of electron only have the performance impact of a browser tab.

This is especially useful for "utility applications".

Ah utilities of 100MB size then.

~100Kb*

Only as much as is the actual application logic and bundled dependencies. Which for most cases is usually a few kilobytes or a megabyte. You can checkout the Quark appstore (https://dash.quarkjs.io/). None of the apps is above 2MB.

My task manager shows otherwise for an Electron tab.

Great job explaining that. I couldn't have said that well myself. :P. That's exactly what it is.

I mean, there's already Visual Code, an Electron IDE pretty much.

It's not an electron IDE like VSCOde or Atom. But an IDE and a JavaScript runtime that helps you build and run electron applications.

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