Top all-time · #7370
Niels Leenheer
Personal blog · nielsleenheer.com/articleswebprogramming
Niels Leenheer's personal blog at nielsleenheer.com covers web and programming. Since 2021, 11 different Hacker News readers have linked it 12 times, most often “Why Electron apps are fine”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-03-27, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (3) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Niels Leenheer's posts on browser engines and the web replacing desktop apps. The comments discuss Chromium forks, the Apple-Google engine rivalry and Electron's multi-platform case.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 3 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Ever since I saw the very first web browser by Tim Berners-Lee I’ve been fascinated by the web. I love web standards and open source. Currently I run HTML5test.com, created WhichBrowser and I regularly speak at conferences. I am also part of the Fronteers Conference committee. Follow me on Bluesky a
Most-linked posts?
- Why Electron apps are fine3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-08-31
- Why Safari does not need any protection from Chromium2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-02-10
- CSS is DOOMed2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-03-28
What Hacker News says?
That’s not necessarily true, even Microsoft has its own tweaks of Chromium: > We’ve seen Edge adding some privacy enhancements to Chromium pioneered by Safari. Edge shipped those, but Chrome did not. And as more browsers start using Chromium and large companies will work on improving Chromium, more of these disagreements will happen. It will be interesting to see what happens. Just because a browser is based on Chro…
Comment linking /articles/2022/why-safari-does-not-need-any-protection-from-chromium/
on “Bringing SerenityOS to real hardware, one driver at a time”Submitted CSS is DOOMed as a story · 20 points
HN discussionWhile the Apple-Google rivalry seems to have waned compared to a decade ago, I just don’t see Apple completely capitulating their platform/browser engine like Microsoft did. Not to mention even if Apple switched to Chromium, they’d just end up taking over that engine, even forking it later down the road: > We can only imagine what would have happened if Chrome kept using WebKit. We probably ended up with a WebKit-mo…
Comment linking /articles/2022/why-safari-does-not-need-any-protection-from-chromium/
on “Bringing SerenityOS to real hardware, one driver at a time”Submitted Why Electron apps are fine as a story · 14 points
HN discussion- WA · 2021-09-09
> Notice how the arguments pro Electron always include speed of development, speed of deployment, etc. (dev-focused) You kinda oversimplify the multi-platform reality of 2021 and its requirements from a user perspective . Most apps used to be Windows-only. Nowadays, most apps need to be Windows, macOS, iOS and Android. This is a user-focused requirement. "It's either a multi-platform Electron app or it is no macOS a…
Comment linking /articles/2021/why-electron-apps-are-fine/
on “The web is swallowing the desktop whole (2017)” Submitted Chrome is the new Safari. And so are Edge and Firefox as a story · 8 points
HN discussionSubmitted The problem with User-Agent strings as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why Safari does not need any protection from Chromium as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why Electron apps are fine as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Doom in CSS as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted A brief history of the User-Agent string as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Hardware and the web: the balance between usefulness, security and privacy as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
