Electron at DCNA 2017

Making Huge Strides Back to Desktop

So what is this Electron thing everyone keeps talking about? Even if you haven’t heard of it, you may have used it! With over 4 millions daily users on Slack’s business oriented chat system, their cross-platform desktop application helps them reach their users outside of browsers, but these systems are in fact part of the same thing.

Back in May 2014, prolific bastions of open source and $2b valuated company, GitHub, took the custom application wrapper it originally created for its Atom code editor and released into the world—and Electron was born. Rebranded from “Atom Shell” in 2015, Electron began to take off almost immediately, allowing regular web developers the ability to make native-like, high performance desktop applications using the exact same HTML, CSS, and JavaScript technologies they use to make the rest of the web.

Piggybacking on the huge wave of API first work in Drupal 8 utilized via the Waterwheel client wrapper, building with Electron allows you to create nearly native desktop experiences using frameworks like React, Redux, Angular, or anything else that your team can construct to run in a web browser. Beyond even that, Electron gives JavaScript direct access to low level Node.js and operating system APIs, allowing your application direct file access, running custom binaries for data processing, execution of alternative scripting languages, serial port or hardware access, and tons more.

Supercharge Your Next Web App

This year at DrupalCon Baltimore, we present “Supercharge Your Next Web App with Electron”, a session that digs deep and covers everything you need in order to dip into the waters of Electron. We’ll talk about what big companies have already taken the plunge and even provide a checklist for when not to move from the web to a desktop app.

Though an Electron app may not be the right choice for your next application, knowing what tools are available to you—and understanding their incredible possibilities—is going to serve you anytime you’re  considering user-oriented frameworks. Don’t miss out on this interesting view into a future of low-energy/high-return desktop applications in the DrupalCon Horizons track this year.

And, during active exposition hours, make sure to come over to the Four Kitchens booth to see a live demo of an Electron app powered by JavaScript—we build a robot artist!