Building desktop apps with web technologies, low barrier to entry, and ease with finding developers are only a few Electron advantages. Discover more of them below.
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The look and feel of desktop applications have advanced over the past years, with more and more applications resembling modern websites than ever before.
The technology behind this latest evolutionary step of desktop applications is called Electron. It’s easy to use, fast, and facilitates the development process.
There are at least 5 reasons why you should build an Electron desktop app before your competitors do. So let’s reveal them.
Electron, also called Electron JS, is a software development framework for building native applications (applications that run natively on Windows, macOS, and Linux) using web technologies, such as JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. Electron itself is also open source, and it’s maintained by GitHub and an active community of contributors from around the world.
<span class="colorbox1" fs-test-element="box1"><p>Key take-away: With Electron, we build desktop apps using web technologies – JavaScript, HTML, CSS.</p></span>
The first version of Electron was released in 2013 as Atom Shell, and the framework has since then been embraced by a large number of desktop applications, with many of them being open source.
Here are 5 popular Electron apps that you’ve most likely heard about at some point in time:
There’s a number of reasons why developers flock to Electron, and why the demand for them has been growing steadily in recent years.
Let’s take a closer look at 5 things developers love about Electron to explain why it makes so much sense to use it for your next desktop app.
Professional developers are in extremely high demand these days, and it’s estimated that the number of unfulfilled software development positions could exceed one million by 2020. That’s especially bad news for anyone who is looking for quality software developers, especially if they are also on a tight budget.
Because Electron uses JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and other web technologies, virtually all developers with web development skills can get started with it without much effort. And since web developers typically charge less than software engineers, they are the perfect answer to the talent shortage for small and medium-sized businesses.
<span class="colorbox1" fs-test-element="box1"><p>Key take-away: Web developers can get started with Electron easily, which solves the problem with talent shortage for small companies.</p></span>
Back in the day, it took a very long time to develop even a relatively small desktop application because software developers had to write all of its parts from scratch, using low-level programming languages that provided minimal handholding.
Instead of using low-level programming languages like C or C++, Electron uses JavaScript, one of the easiest and most effective programming languages in use today.
Because JavaScript code is interpreted line by line, developers can effortlessly debug and optimize it, which allows them to ship applications much faster than they could otherwise.
Mobile devices have changed what we expect applications to do. Instead of downloading updates from a website, users anticipate applications to update automatically as soon as the latest version is released, preferably in the background. They also expect applications to be shipped as convenient installers that bundle all application components together.
Electron desktop apps can automatically update themselves thanks to the autoUpdater component.
Creating convenient installers for Electron desktop apps takes very little time thanks to electron-builder, a complete solution to package and build a ready for distribution Electron app for macOS, Windows, and Linux.
<span class="colorbox1" fs-test-element="box1"><p>Key take-away: Every Electron desktop app updates automatically, as soon as the new version is released.</p></span>
When you write an Electron application, you can be sure that it will run on all major desktop operating systems, including Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Many different OS integrations are supported right out of the box, such as native OS menu bars, notifications tray applets, media keys, and others, which saves developers a considerable amount of time.
The reason Electron desktop applications run flawlessly across different operating systems is simple: they are essentially instances of the Chromium web browser, Google’s open-source web browser project. That’s also why they tend to consume far more memory than desktop applications written in other programming languages.
Electron is a massive open source project whose reach spans the globe, and there are thriving Electron communities of developers and users everywhere, producing an abundance of educational resources and development tools.
Perhaps because Electron has such a low barrier to entry, Electron communities tend to be extremely welcoming to newcomers, and they never punish their members for asking questions and being curious.
<span class="colorbox1" fs-test-element="box1"><p>Key take-away: Electron community is very welcoming and helpful. They produce lots of resources and provide support eagerly.</p></span>
Technical decisions should be made with business goals in mind.
It’s about picking the right tools for the job, not following trends, and breaking down the boundaries between IT and business.
We need to aim for the most effective solution, balancing impact and effort, and improving internal processes.
Electron supports that. It’s a good choice for those who want to eliminate the waste of time and talent.
Cross-platform development with Electron allows to speed up time-to-market.
At the top level there’s Mac, Linux, and Windows, but what about multiple versions of those systems? Building a separate product for each is a waste of time. Electron allows development teams to avoid that.
To develop an app with Electron developers need to be familiar with web technologies. The threshold for entry is fairly low.
Companies can use talents they already have – Electron is easy to learn, especially if you worked with Node.js – or hire fairly quickly.
Result? Elimination of talent waste. And most often our team expands their competencies, becoming even more T-shaped skilled. That’s a solid win.
Electron is a progressive software development framework that has given us a number of prominent desktop applications, including Atom, Discord, Slack, Trello, and Etcher, just to name a few.
The reasons why professional Electron JS developers enjoy using it include its low barrier to entry, fast speed of development, automatic updates and convenient installers, cross-platform support, and its large community of developers and users.
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