What Are The Best Alternatives To Electron For Cross-Platform Desktop App Development_

1. What Are The Best Alternatives To Electron For Cross-Platform Desktop App Development? 001

2. Introduction While Electron may be a high-quality desktop app development platform, its alternatives can be better for the project you have at hand. Learn more about Electron and its substitutes here. Before the arrival of the Electron project, Cross-platform desktop app development used to be a challenging venture, even for the most gifted and rigorously trained developers. After all, they had to uphold separate codebases for every operating system they created apps for. While there were a few generic APIs available for Cross-platform desktop app development, generating custom GUI elements was the real problem. However, Electron brought forth new Cross-platform desktop app development strategies where developers only have to use just one codebase and the most recognized web technologies, such as JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. Developers can now create surprisingly flexible and user-friendly GUIs using the front-end frameworks they prefer. They can also build customized GUI controls with relative ease using CSS and HTML. 002

3. Additionally, Electron comes with a fully-featured API designed specifically for native operating systems. Even with all these bells and whistles, Electron couldn’t retain the interest of the Cross-platform desktop app development community or the developers working with app development agencies. Several reasons contributed to the downfall of the Electron. For starters, applications created using this platform eat up more resources than necessary on the users’ computers. It’s one of the main reasons why Cross-platform desktop app development specialists keep their eyes peeled for alternatives to Electron that won’t cause the same issues. This topic will tell you more about Electron and some of the best alternatives you and your Cross-platform desktop app development experts can depend on. 003

4. About Electron There was a time when Electron had another name – Atom Shell. Of course, purposes are more important than names when it comes to Cross-platform desktop app development. In that regard, Electron is a Cross-platform desktop app development framework designed by GitHub. The specialists there merged Node.js and the Chromium project into one to send notifications, display dialog boxes, and create tray icons and notifications. A Cross-platform desktop app development expert can build an application’s GUI while using the front-end framework they like along with the web UI toolkit. For instance, modern developers can use Material UI and React to develop the front-end. They can also depend on the JavaScript API of the framework to manage all the features of the required operating system. If the developers have to showcase a message box, they can use a method that involves entering the code “dialog.showMessageBox” from the API of Electron. If you want to build cross-platform desktop apps, your developers won’t have to bother with platform-specific code, as Electron comes with dialog box implementations for Windows, macOS, and Linux. 004

5. The advantages Of course, Electron has several impressive benefits to offer to service providers. That’s why many specialists choose it to build cross-platform desktop apps. Here are some of them. Delivering features rapidly It’s easy for a trained and experienced developer to create UIs with CSS and HTML in Electron. These web-based technologies give developers an opportunity to create any custom element for the GUI. Furthermore, Node.js comes with a profound ecosystem of libraries so that you can build cross-platform desktop apps with native-like features. 005

6. Singular codebase Electron is flexible in terms of abstraction for the features of native operating systems. Understandably, developers get to maintain one codebase to build cross-platform desktop apps that’ll run on almost every popular platform. Framework maturity Nine years have passed since the arrival of the Electron. Naturally, it has a noteworthy user base and community. The framework has some of the best and most useful features added to it, including automatic updates. World-renowned business brands like Microsoft build cross-platform desktop apps using Electron. Some of the examples worth mentioning are Microsoft Teams, Visual Studio Code, and Skype. 006

7. The underlying problems None of the advantages elucidated above could save Electron from the performance issues hidden within. Electron is a combination of Node.js and Chromium, and it bundles the two into the ultimate package of the application. Therefore, even if you hire the best service provider to write the simplest and lightest application, they’ll end up creating a bloated digital product. Even their choice of frameworks and front-end libraries can prevent this problem from occurring. Node.js and Chromium have complications, and the modules will inevitably capture more resources than expected on your device. In other words, if you build cross-platform desktop apps using Electron, you’ll lose significant amounts of disk space and physical space. Additionally, using this framework on a laptop can be detrimental to its battery. As it occupies too much of the available resources, the power source will run out within a short period. You can, of course, rely on powerful hardware to eliminate this drawback. However, if you attempt to run several apps created using Electron, this performance issue will reveal itself again. 007

8. The alternatives So, what are your options? What Alternatives app development solutions can you depend on? NW.js The first name on this list is one of the best frameworks based on JavaScript for desktop app development projects. NW.js should be your choice, which was previously called node-WebKit. NW.js is the result of the hard work of the experts working at the Open-Source Technology Center of Intel by bringing Node.js and Chromium together. Due to this combination, it’s one of the best Alternatives app development options. NW.js gives app developers the freedom to select libraries and frameworks in an un-opinionated way. It’s perfectly possible to call the modules of Node.js directly from the DOM. This platform also features the browser and provides JavaScript source protection and is available on macOS, Linux, and Windows. 008

9. Meteor Meteor is one of the best Alternatives app developers for Electron. According to the creators of the platform, it facilitates the faster development of JavaScript apps than any other solution. It’s an open-source platform for mobile devices, web, and desktop computers. It’s a cross-platform framework created using Node.js that developers can use for building mobile, web, and desktop applications. While it doesn’t facilitate desktop app development by itself, the experts of Alternatives app development can combine it with Cordova or other similar tools to build applications. It leverages Distributed Data Protocol, MongoDB, and publish-subscribe pattern to propagate the changes automatically without the developer’s input. Meteor has two modules – one for the front-end and another for the back-end, including the necessary tools, APIs, and Node.js packages. 009

10. AppJS AppJS is another one of the Alternatives app development solutions you can pick for your project. App developers can use it to create cross-platform solutions without learning any other programming language. Just like the other libraries, a developer shouldn’t have trouble working on a project as long as they’re familiar with CSS, HTML, and JavaScript. This combination framework created using Node.js and Chromium is older than Electron and NW.js. However, in terms of maturity, the AppJS isn’t as mature as Electron or NW.js. It doesn’t have the momentum it had before. Naturally, it’s better to stay away from it. Then again, the choice of the Alternatives app development solutions depends on the project. 0010

11. Proton Native Proton Native is relatively new in the field. It came out on GitHub during the earliest months of 2018. Proton Native has the same things to offer to desktop app development as React Native to mobile app development. It’s one of the best JavaScript frameworks your developers can use to build apps for desktop devices. It lets them manage the state and develop UIs seamlessly while making the app a cross-platform solution. Proton Native isn’t anything like Electron because it works differently. The latter runs entirely on the Chromium browser to manage even the smallest GUIs. However, Proton Native leverages native tools, utilizes less space, and isn’t as demanding as Electron regarding resources. 0011

12. Final considerations Based on the information provided above, it’s clear that one of the alternatives can be much better than Electron. The apps created using Electron take up too much disk space as each application gets bundled with Node.js and Chromium. Conversely, the substitutes have surprisingly low bundle sizes as these frameworks reuse the web browser library of the users’ operating systems. So, if you need developers who specialize in one or more of the alternatives of Electron, get in touch with Moon Technolabs. Source: https://www.moontechnolabs.com/blog/best-alternatives-to-electron-for-cross-platform-deskto p-app-development/ 0012

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