For instance, you may choose to use a Mac-specific feature such as spotlight and now your app won't work on a Windows computer. It's certainly possible to bake dependencies into your node packages that are platform-dependent. This means that electron-based desktop apps can do anything that native apps can do. As you might already know, node packages can call native code. Where you need to tap into native device capabilities, such as file system, Bluetooth, or USB, you can use node packages. It lets you build cross-platform desktop apps using JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. Think of Electron as Cordova for desktops. In this article, I'll introduce, dissect, and push the limits of Electron. And just like you have Cordova plug-ins, Electron uses node packages. Just like you have Cordova for mobile, for desktop you have Electron. This is exactly what Java promised, except this time it's actually practical.īut what about desktop? We can't ignore the fact that MacOS and Windows desktops are still where 90% of the actual work gets done. You can write stuff once and run it everywhere. When you need to tap into native platform capabilities, you have plug-ins for platforms like Cordova. That's a realization everyone will come to, sooner or later. In fact, when it comes to expressing UI, in many cases Web technologies give us a better rendering platform than anything else.Īlthough I agree that native still offers more power, I also insist that in 99% of those cases, you don't need that power. Web-based open technologies, notably JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, have become incredibly potent. On each of these platforms, you have their respective frameworks, nuances, and annoyances.Īt the same time, while these sharks are rearranging chairs on their respective sinking Titanics of native platforms, a new way of writing applications has emerged: the Web.

Within mobile, there's iOS, Android, and Windows, within Web, you have many browsers, and on desktop, you have MacOS, Windows, and Linux. What has made things challenging lately is that clients want this functionality to be across numerous platforms: mobile, desktop, and Web. And, at the heart of every application is logic, rendering, communication, and storage. Our clients want us to develop applications that they can use. NET or WPF or Cocoa or Metal, the names change, but our jobs don't. Both languages are supported by rich underlying platforms. Both Apple and Microsoft have been pushing you to use Swift or C# to write functionality for their operating systems. The sharks in our tech ocean have their app stores.

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