With this, desktop app development is no longer the exclusive capability of C++, C#, or Java developers. Simply put, web developers can use the combination of Chromium, the open-source version of The Google Chrome browser, and the Node.js JavaScript runtime and wrap their existing web applications with Electron.js to build desktop applications and generate installers for Windows, macOS, and Linux OS platforms.

It was then open-sourced in May 2014 and is being maintained by GitHub since then.Įlectron docs states “ElectronJS is a runtime framework that allows the user to create desktop-suite applications with HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript”. What Is Electron.js?Įlectron.js was first developed by the team at Atom to make cross-platform development easier for their application. So, building a cross-platform application that worked across all desktop platforms as well as on the web was nearly impossible, until Electron came along. But these quirks and requirements are evident in language optimizations, API availability, toolchain preferences, and many more dependencies that pop up when you build native applications. It also adds to development costs and could make maintenance quite cumbersome.Įach platform has its own unique capabilities and quirks. But, building separate applications for each platform could lead to duplicated effort. For applications used by a wide array of audiences, it is preferred that the application runs on all platforms. The frameworks for Desktop applications are OS-specific and at times even specific to the version of the OS.

There are multiple Operating Systems – Microsoft Windows, Linux, and macOS at the topmost level. Similarly, there are several frameworks for building native desktop applications like Microsoft Visual Studio and Cocoa. There is a wide range of frameworks for building web applications like Ruby on Rails, Django, Angular, and more.

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