Electron
If you can build a website, you can build a desktop app. Electron is a framework for creating native applications with web technologies like JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. It takes care of the hard parts so you can focus on the core of your application.
Cost / License
- Free
- Open Source
Platforms
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
Features
- Support for HTML5
- Desktop Publishing
- Support for Javascript
- Native application
Tags
- Software Framework
- application-builder
- web-applications
- Web Development
Electron News & Activities
Recent News
- Fla published news article about Delta Chat
Delta Chat Desktop now runs in Firefox and no longer depends on Electron or ChromiumDelta Chat Desktop now runs in Firefox, removing the previous dependency on Electron or Chromium. B...
Recent activities
CosmoMyzrailGorynych added Electron as alternative to Buntralino
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What is Electron?
If you can build a website, you can build a desktop app. Electron is a framework for creating native applications with web technologies like JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. It takes care of the hard parts so you can focus on the core of your application.
With Electron, creating a desktop application for your company or idea is easy. Initially developed for GitHub's Atom editor, Electron has since been used to create applications by companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Slack, and Docker.
- Electron uses Chromium and Node.js so you can build your app with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
- Electron is an open source project maintained by GitHub and an active community of contributors.
- Compatible with Mac, Windows, and Linux, Electron apps build and run on three platforms.
Electron information
Developed by
OpenJS Foundation Licensing
Open Source (MIT) and Free product.Written in
Rating
Average rating of 3Alternatives
43 alternatives listedSupported Languages
- English
AlternativeTo Categories
Development, Office & ProductivityGitHub repository
- 119,576 Stars
- 16,876 Forks
- 913 Open Issues
- Updated
Comments and Reviews
Build cross platform desktop apps with web technologies
Formerly known as Atom Shell.
With Electron, creating a desktop application for your company or idea is easy. Initially developed for GitHub's Atom editor, Electron has since been used to create applications by companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Slack, Docker and Ruvenss IT Consulting Services.
Most of the programs created with this are too memory intensive.
The worst invention ever. Chromium + NodeJS provide better cross-platform ability, but these two monsters also consume too much memory and disk space.
From a developer point of view, the biggest advantage is the possibility for small teams of using established and widely known web technologies to distribute a cross-platform app without much knowledge about native platform APIs. That comes at the cost of sort of having a complete Chrome browser running for every Electron app which is anything but fast or efficient. Really slow compared to native code. And it is unrealistic to provide a user experience which is consistent with established patterns - per platform.
As a user I started trying to avoid Electron-based apps because usually their user experience is bad due to their technological overhead. Widely known chat clients lag and consume an irrational amount of memory because of using this technology, even though the do only simple things. That is a use case that worked smoother years or even decades ago with much slower and more constrained resources.
Electron is very easy to use, and its very easy to deploy using electron-builder.
It's very hard to optimize Electron apps, because it's basically a browser. There's no point in having another browser running on your computer than spending a bit more time making a native app with Qt or some other cross-platform framework.
I started an electron course before a few days and I have to say that framework or how you wanna call that is awesome!