Electron Desktop Apps

GitHub Electron (or simply Electron) allows you to build desktop applications . Electron is a blend of two incredibly popular technologies: Node.js (or simply Node) and Chromium. Thus, any web application you have written can run on Electron. Similarly, any Node application you have written can run on Electron. But the power of Electron is that you can use both solutions together. The two technologies together create a rich and engaging desktop applications.

Who Is Using Electron?

The very popular team messaging application Slack is built atop Electron, enabling them to develop a common UI across the operating systems. If Atom is not your code editor of choice, then Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code might be. This popular editor is also built atop Electron. This is currently our editor of choice at the moment. The team at Basecamp, a popular project management tool, now supports an out of browser experience. If you have worked with Zeplin.io to inspect your visual designs, then the desktop version was developed with Electron. The Postman API inspection tool is another great example of what is possible as an Electron application. These are just some of the examples of some first-class web applications that have been able to break free from the browser and create desktop-centric versions of their applications. If you would like to explore some other applications that have been built with Electron, visit https://electronjs.org/apps

Electron’s Advantages

Electron applications are just like any other desktop application as they are installed locally on the user’s hard drive. They can be launched directly from the Windows taskbar or from the OSX Dock, and there is no need to launch a browser and navigate to some url to run your application. When you need to open or save a file, these dialogs are native in appearance and interaction. Your Electron application can support full dragand-drop interaction with a local file system, or even associate itself with a file type, so when a user doubleclicks the associated file your app will open.

How Does Electron Work?

Electron-based applications run in two distinct processes: the main process and the render process Each of these two processes has a specific responsibility within your application. While Electron provides a good collection of Node modules for use within your application, many of these modules are only available within a specific process