I think it's completely different. This essentially lets you build local applications that use the dom as the UI and JS as the controlling language.

The site doesn't do much to explain that though, so here's a presentation:

https://speakerdeck.com/zcbenz/node-webkit-app-runtime-based...

Edit: Oh yeah, sometimes folks do answer honest questions ;)

This is completely different than meteor. Meteor is for making realtime web applications, this is for making desktop applications by leverage existing web technology (html/css/js).

I wonder what performance would be like for multimedia applications or gaming (which are usually written in strongly-typed, compiled langs like C++).

They are different in purpose and features. If anything, Meteor would use Node-Webkit to assist building desktop apps, the same way Meteor is using Phonegap to build mobile apps.

Basically, it's a scriptable desktop application derived from a browser.

Nothing to do with a server framework as it's at the other end of the pipe. ;)

What made you draw the conclusion that this is anything like Meteor?

Actually I think it would be quite interesting to know what caused the confusion.

My first reaction was that the projects are completely different and the question must have been grounded in a complete misunderstanding of what NW is, but as I think more I realize that there are some notable similarities.

Meteor synchronizes the clients and server in such a way that it seems they're running in the same process on the same machine, and the only thing the developer need worry about is adding some declarative configuration for security and efficiency (obviously this simplifies things a bit).

NW actually makes the client and server run in the same process on the same machine (or rather the parts of the stack that typically run on the client and server respectively).

The parent comment asked a question which may well have provoked an interesting discussion into a topic like this. And although its phrasing may have been a little blunt, it didn't come across as rude. If we assume that evo_9's comment was honest confusion rather than laziness, it's then only fair to assume Kiro's was founded in genuine interest as to where the confusion lies.

I wasn't trying to be snarky. I was just interested.

Apologies, as I misinterpreted your short reply. It was a bit odd have "how is A different than B?" replied to as "well, how is A similar to B?".

Now that I think about it they are both quite similar ("build apps with node.js/html/js/npm") and very different at the same time (webserver vs chromium runtime), so both questions are fair.

Thank you. I agree that they are both similar and different at the same time so I don't find it strange that someone would think it's like Meteor. It would still be interesting to hear his/her reasoning though since I suspect it was due to the lack of real information on the homepage.

They are not playing on the same market, node-webkit is about creating native apps with node + webkit + web technologies. As an example, Popcorn Time is built with node-webkit.

This is quite different to Meteor, allows you to package node and webkit together to create a native-looking desktop application written in Javascript.

People will downvote if it's irrelevant to the discussion.