Show HN: A Gmail desktop client in Electron(github.com)
github.com
Show HN: A Gmail desktop client in Electron
https://github.com/paulot/gmail
3 comments
This is bizarre. It seems everybody want to use Electron for something. Couldn't you create a shortcut to opening Chrome in "app mode" (without URL bar or browser menus) directly in Gmail?
Sure, but by making it an app it more tightly integrates with the desktop. For instance, I personally find it rather useless that when you resize gmail to a small screen, around 25% of my screen's real-estate is taken by the hangouts menu, which I almost never use. A much better use of screen space would be to hide the hangouts menu, when the screen diminishes. Also, by going the app route we can set some nice app specific shortcuts to gmail page functionalities that users might not know about and leverage Apple's awesome search bar under the help menu.
The idea of this app was to make a gmail equivalent to what Caprine (https://github.com/sindresorhus/caprine) is for fb messenger. I've been using the gmail app since last week (when I made it) and so far, I like it more than I thought I would.
The idea of this app was to make a gmail equivalent to what Caprine (https://github.com/sindresorhus/caprine) is for fb messenger. I've been using the gmail app since last week (when I made it) and so far, I like it more than I thought I would.
You should probably rename the project before Google comes after you for copyright infringement. Nice project :-D
Interesting use of Electron.
Did you recreate the Gmail interface and leverage its API[1], or is this just running gmail.com in a webview?
[1] https://developers.google.com/gmail/api/?hl=en
Did you recreate the Gmail interface and leverage its API[1], or is this just running gmail.com in a webview?
[1] https://developers.google.com/gmail/api/?hl=en
Just as a webview. I thought of recreating the interface using the API, but frankly it seemed like over-engineering the problem. My goal with this project is to simply provide a better way to use gmail, and not have it lost in the millions of tabs that I constantly keep open in my browser.
It just as webview running on native desktop application.