You can think of the webview as a specialized iframe with concessions made for security: it runs out-of-process and lets you avoid polluting the guest page with Node. We host pages using an Electron feature called webview. With that distinction made, letвЂ™s talk about why we needed an overhaul. Installers for all platformsвЂЉ-вЂЉmainlyВ Windows.Support for deep-linking, launch on login, taskbar and dockВ badging.Support for spell-check and language detection.Support for notifications across all platformsвЂЉ-вЂЉeven WindowsВ 7.Support for multiple workspaces is the main customer-facing feature, but much of our codebase is devoted to creating a layer of native integration that most folks donвЂ™t notice until itвЂ™sВ gone: You might think thereвЂ™s not much to embedding a web page, but like the 1990 classic Tremors, thereвЂ™s a lot happening underground. Although the webapp is on its own quest for modernity, this post is about the Electron container aroundВ it. The guest pages are like browser tabs pointed at, which we call the webapp.

The desktop app is a host for some number of guest pages. YouвЂ™ll sometimes see us refer to вЂњthe webappвЂќ vs вЂњthe desktop app вЂќ what does this mean? How do they relate to one another? A picture might clear thisВ up: ItвЂ™s like a browser that only takes you to Before we dig into the specifics of 3.0вЂЉ- why it was necessary and how we got thereвЂЉ-вЂЉwe need to cover a little bit of SlackВ history. The good news is that itвЂ™s available on our beta channel now. In all seriousness, the experience some customers have had leaves us with a pit in our stomach, and weвЂ™ve been working tirelessly towards a more mature version of the app, dubbed Slack 3.0. Kinda seems like that something is вЂњwriting a desktop chat app in JavaScriptвЂќ. The only silver lining has been being on the receiving end of some absolutely savageВ burns: Instead of flailing limbs and pitch squeaks, ours has manifested in ways rather more grim: inexplicably failing to render content, reloading during common operations, and error screens that arenвЂ™t actionable.

Recently Slack on the desktop has been going through an awkward adolescence.

Slack desktop app multiple processes