
Photon – Framework for Electron apps - K-Wall
http://photonkit.com/
======
andrewmcwatters
The problem that I have with Connor Sears' work and others, like the Ionic
Team's is that they don't look anything like the target platform.

I'd love to work with something that was the framework equivalent of the iOS9
UI kit produced by Teehan+Lax/Facebook, or any properly designed replica of
another platform, but no one produces such things. All you're left with is
mediocre rip-offs that are tasteless.

I don't want to make a Photon app. I don't want to make an Ionic app. I want
to make an iOS app. If you want to compete with native, compete with native
and actually _try_.

------
mcao
I guess I don't understand what makes this Electron specific. It looks like a
UI kit similar to Bootstrap and others. Maybe it's too early in the project,
but some mention of how the Node portions of Electron are used would be
helpful.

~~~
giancarlostoro
Yeah it looks like an attempt to create a UI kit, which I think is helpful for
those who want to work with Electron without having to actually design their
entire interface. I imagine it will get better overtime and become fine tuned
for Electron in specific.

edit: typo

------
WorldMaker
This seems like a great start. Hopefully they'll get good looking Windows and
Linux themes together as well.

~~~
giancarlostoro
I'm really hoping this becomes the case, if not, then at least a more neutral
looking interface so that it transfers smoother across platforms. I guess kind
of how IntelliJ maintains a nice interface across platforms and similar
projects.

------
baghira
This doesn't sound as a good name given the existence of:
[https://vmware.github.io/photon/](https://vmware.github.io/photon/) Granted,
in the context of atom and electron it makes sense, but still.

~~~
lultimouomo
Also an unfortunate name clash with the Photon and Electron embedded boards by
Particle...

~~~
baghira
At this rate I also foresee a clash with Phonon and Plasma from the KDE
project.

------
cbuq
I believe these frameworks are very cool and web-apps as desktop-apps is
probably the future.

My biggest concern is how these technologies will work in the commercial
world.

Do I now need to license Photon, Electron, NodeWebkit, Node, Webkit + friends?

~~~
0942v8653
> web-apps as desktop-apps is probably the future

Can you expand on this? I'm interested in your viewpoint because the general
consensus on HN seems to be that webapps are better off as webapps and desktop
apps are better off as desktop apps—being in the browser seems to be good
enough for most webapps, and when packaging something as a desktop app there
are little quirks that mess it up.

~~~
cbuq
As giancarlostoro mentioned, it's mostly about the web ecosystem; web apps
have an amazing number of opensource projects to take advantage of. I see a
huge benefit from being cross-platform (windows/osx/linux/android/ios/even
blackberry) and only having to develop and maintain one ui. Some examples I
can think of are Spotify, Atom, Thunderbird. Web technologies are also being
standardized more than many desktop technologies have been; \- HTML5 (<video>,
<canvas>, <template>) \- CSS (styling) \- WebRTC (peer-to-peer communication)
\- WebGL (3d) \- Local Storage (local persistent storage) \- Web Workers
(threading) \- Device APIs (geolocation, orientation, camera, other sensors)

I don't mean throw your website behind a mini-browser and call it desktop app,
but if you design a desktop application with web technologies there are some
very interesting combinations.

I also think the biggest gains come from realizing this is literally just the
ui. The desktop application doesn't have to be written in javascript, you can
still write your application logic in c++, and all you have to do is expose an
endpoint and talk over localhost!

------
boromi
So is this just some sort of UI elements for electron? I don't understand what
it offers that's new?

~~~
charlieegan3
This is what it offers:
[http://photonkit.com/components/](http://photonkit.com/components/)

As well as something in the way of a template for you to build on.

------
john-kelly
would love a yeoman generator for this.

~~~
hlfcoding
Honestly why? Will you make that many desktop apps that are all the same?

