Electron, solvingour
cross-platform* dreams?
FOSDEM 2017
@chrischinch
*Desktop

–Sun Microsystems, 1995
“Write once, run anywhere”

Enter Electron

Use any of these?

What is it?
• From GitHub*
• JavaScript as a ‘desktop’
Application
• Version 1.5 released last week
*You might have heard of them

Install and Setup
npm install -g electron
npm install electron —save-dev
brew install Caskroom/cask/electron

For GUI fans

For CLI fans
electron .

An Electron project
index.html: The web page
rendered by default.
main.js: Starts app and creates
a browser window to render
HTML.
package.json: Lists application
dependencies, meta data and
files needed.

main.js
const electron = require('electron');
const app = electron.app;
const BrowserWindow = electron.BrowserWindow;
var mainWindow = null;
app.on('window-all-closed', function() {
if (process.platform != 'darwin') {
app.quit();
}
});
app.on('ready', function() {
mainWindow = new BrowserWindow({width: 800, height: 600});
mainWindow.loadURL('file://' + __dirname + '/app/index.html');
mainWindow.on('closed', function() {
mainWindow = null;
});
});

The app

Packaging
• Create asar archive
• Copy files into Electron app
• Rename, distribute, etc…
• Use 3rd party tool 👍

Electron Packager
electron-packager
/Users/chrisward/Workspace/sp_electron MarvelBrowse
--platform=darwin --arch=x64 --asar --prune
--out=/Users/chrisward/Workspace --overwrite
--icon=/Users/chrisward/Workspace/sp_electron/marvel-app.icns

Going native
• Notifications
• Recent documents
• Menus
• Progress bars, thumbnails,
represented file, dock, System
preferences…

Negatives
• Application size
• CPU
• Memory
• Not-native
• Platform inconsistencies

Thank You!
Chris Ward
gregariousmammal.com
@chrischinch
Developer Relations & Technical Writer
I have stickers and merchandise!