Building Cross-Platform Desktop Applications with Electron

Key Features

• Build a solid foundation with Electron for an easier development experience
• Use modern JavaScript frameworks and tools along with Electron to take your desktop applications to the next level
• Extend the functionality of Electron through modules

Book Description

Though web applications are becoming increasingly popular, desktop apps are still important. The Electron framework lets you write cross-platform desktop applications using JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, and this book will teach you how to create your first desktop application with Electron. It will guide you on how to build desktop applications that run on Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms.

You will begin your journey with an overview of Electron, and then move on to explore the various stages of creating a simple social media application. Along the way, you will learn how to use advanced Electron APIs, debug an Electron application, and make performance improvements using the Chrome developer tools. You’ll also find out how to package and distribute an application, and more.

By the end of the book, you will be able to build a complete desktop application using Electron and web technologies. You will have a solid understanding of the common challenges that desktop app developers face, and you’ll know how to solve them.

What you will learn

• Explore various tools and libraries to build and debug an Electron application
• Use popular JavaScript frameworks such as Angular and Typescript along with Electron to enhance your app
• Work with the desktop UI development for Electron using Photon
• Find out how to use various Electron APIs like Clipboard, Process, Shell, Image, File, Session, and Cookie
• Integrate your application into different desktop environments with Electron API
• Cache your network resources using service worker
• Test the Electron application using Mocha and Spectron
• See how to package and distribute an Electron application

About the Author

Muhammed Jasim has been involved in enterprise web application projects for more than 8 years. He started his software development career working with the Microsoft .NET platform and is currently working as a full stack developer for JavaScript applications. Throughout his career, he has developed many projects using a wide range of technologies and frameworks in both .NET and Node.js platforms. Currently, he is working for a Dubai-based airline company and is focused on the full-stack JavaScript application development.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Introducing Electron
Chapter 2. Building Your First Electron Application
Chapter 3. Tooling And Debugging
Chapter 4. Using Angular 2 With Electron
Chapter 5. Crafting User Interface
Chapter 6. Using Node.Js With Electron
Chapter 7. Deep Dive Into Electron Api – 1
Chapter 8. Exploring Electron Api – 2
Chapter 9. Integrating With Desktop Environments
Chapter 10. Dealing With Web Standards
Chapter 11. Testing Electron Application
Chapter 12. Packaging And Distributing The Application