Stop using Electron for real applications

[Dat Guy]

Ouch:

 

Quote

out of 98 top Electron apps, they averaged 145 known Common Vulnerabilities & Exploits each due to unpached versions of Chromium

 

[vorticalbox]

58 minutes ago, Dat Guy said:

Ouch:

 

 

hardly matters when most applications are contained and don't openly browse the internet. take atom for example, it edits text I don't see how it matter if there is say a JavaScript vulnerability when it never loads anything except local files. Plus it's actually nice building in electron, no .net or java or any dependencies as they are all met by the application.

[Dat Guy]

Just now, vorticalbox said:

when it never loads anything except local files

Which it does if you want it to (including its "packages").

[vorticalbox]

1 minute ago, Dat Guy said:

Which it does if you want it to (including its "packages").

true but say i use angular I download it and include it in the local files. Chances of that downloaded script being infected? rather low.

[Dat Guy]

1 minute ago, vorticalbox said:

Chances of that downloaded script being infected? rather low.

 

See, the problem with major known security issues is not that there is a minor risk that anyone would want to exploit them.

[noahdvs]

The real issue here is that they pack an entire web browser to do something that doesn't require an entire web browser.

[SpaceNugget]

13 hours ago, noahdvs said:

The real issue here is that they pack an entire web browser to do something that doesn't require an entire web browser.

This isn't really an issue. Sure its a bit of a cart before the horse, but its pretty easy to see the demand for electron based apps spurring the creation of a shared electron platform that can host many electron based apps in a single instance of chromium. In the meantime, just don't use electron apps if you don't want to.

 

On 2017-05-12 at 7:36 AM, Dat Guy said:

 

I think you would agree that with only a couple of exceptions, the vast majority of electron applications hardly qualify as 'real applications' in the sense of usability and usefulness. Besides Slack/Discord there aren't really many electron based apps I would tend to want on my computer.

[noahdvs]

1 minute ago, SpaceNugget said:

This isn't really an issue. Sure its a bit of a cart before the horse, but its pretty easy to see the demand for electron based apps spurring the creation of a shared electron platform that can host many electron based apps in a single instance of chromium. In the meantime, just don't use electron apps if you don't want to.

 

I think you would agree that with only a couple of exceptions, the vast majority of electron applications hardly qualify as 'real applications' in the sense of usability and usefulness. Besides Slack/Discord there aren't really many electron based apps I would tend to want on my computer.

I wouldn't say there's a demand for electron apps. Nobody wants an app to be slower and use more resources than it should. It's more that web developers are comfortable making apps for web browsers and don't want to use something like QML with Python, JavaScript or C++ where that would be more appropriate. The only Electron app I really like is VS Code because MS did a good job at optimizing it.