Beginner’s guide to the electron.js

Posted on November 22, 2021 at 05:55 AM

So what is Electron?

Electron.js is a runtime framework founded on 15th July 2013 that allows developers to create desktop applications with HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript.

Features of Electron JS

 

Security

When working with electron.js, it is important to understand it is not a web browser. It allows us to build a complete Desktop application for multiple operating systems using web technologies. Javascript help us to access the filesystem, shell, and many more, this allows us to build a topmost quality native desktop application, the only possible way to inherit security risk is by displaying arbitrary content untrusted sources, if our electron app is executing code from an online source, then it is developer responsibility to make sure it should not be the malicious source.

Low-Level Accessibility

Electron JS, provide us with lots of system-level APIs, but before starting to build an application, make sure that all functionalities you are scoping in the app are available in electron js.  

Performance

Electron js gives premium performance when taken care of properly while developing. Electron js provides lots of gain in terms of performance as compared to the native applications as Electron js has lots of features to play with a single code base for all the major platforms. However, lots of people say Electron JS consumes lots of memory because of chromium-based. But I believe that this only happen when we did not develop applications without care.

Reusability

Here is my favorite part comes, you don’t need to maintain different codes for different platforms, Because we are using a single code base. If you get any bug you can fix it on a single code base, even we can build a bundle for the whole code into the respective package for all mentioned OS at the same time. However, still we need to keep an eye on the OS-level functionalities.

Cost and Time

We can save lots of time and cost while developing the desktop application and achieve good results with Electron JS because of the tech stack we use. And with the electron js, we don’t need to keep different tech stack developers to build applications for different OS.  

The drawback of Electron.js

 

Excessive volume

  Electron JS is the combination of the Chromium rendering engine and the Node.js runtime, The reason behind the large size bundle file is when we bundle the electron js app, it will load all chromium-based APIs.

Customer-specific requirements

The application build with Electorn.js generally doesn’t work when the requirement of all OS is different, like when we need different designs or features for Mac and Windows. In this type of case, Electron.js would be a bad option to choose. 

Summary

  These days javascript ecosystem is on the boom, more and more powerful tools are being developed and shared. Like we can use Angular and React JS as a front end for building an electron app. These days there are tons of options to choose to start building your electron app. I would highly recommend starting building your app with small and complexity step by step after doing deep testing to catch bugs.