Alternatives to node webkit? (filesize of importance) [closed]
There is AppJs, but I don't think it could occupy much less space.
In all cases, a runtime similar to node-webkit is always going to take up some space because it needs to include a webkit rendering engine and a Javascript engine at least, and those are large applications.
node-webkit can be shared across several node-webkit applications, so it's not needed to install 70MB each time, have a look at this documentation for further details:
The size of node-webkit is actually quite reasonable compared to other runtimes such as the JVM which takes up several hundreds megabytes, and 70MB as disk size of nowadays is small (as a comparison it's the size of 10/20 pictures).
Concerning one of your questions, node-webkit cannot reuse the already installed Chrome because it's based on Chromium which is a different browser.
Also there is no way for it to tap into or reuse existing webkit engines in already installed browsers, because versions might be different, security reasons, etc.
Also the webkit in node-webkit is modified to for example allow the user to access the file system, open database connections and all the expected functionality of a non browser based desktop application, so that's another reason why reusing installed browsers is not possible.
I think that TiDeSDK Could fit your needs.
It's is designed to create desktop apps, based in node and webkit. According to its web site the application Wunderlist is developed with TiDesdk and its size is about 30MB based in Mac App Store page: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wunderlist-to-do-task-list/id410628904?mt=12
However, if the size is really important for you, maybe you could consider to develop a Chrome or Firefox extension, that would generate the smallest file to distribute.
EDIT: It seems that the people that worked in TideSDK started a new project, TideKit, with a similar key features and including mobile platforms, It's explained here
EXCERPT from your question: "I don't really care if that's IE"
https://code.google.com/p/phpdesktop/
You can try the PHP Desktop MSIE from the link above, whose minified version is only 5.823 MB