Building Cross-Platform Desktop Applications with Electron

Learn how to develop cross-platform desktop app from scratch with Electron and Node
Building Cross-Platform Desktop Applications with Electron Book Cover

Building Cross-Platform Desktop Applications with Electron

Muhammed Jasim

3 customer reviews
Learn how to develop cross-platform desktop app from scratch with Electron and Node
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Book Details

ISBN 139781786464125
Paperback344 pages

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.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introducing Electron
Why desktop applications?
History of Electron
Introducing Electron
Accessing operating system APIs
Building a hello world application using Electron
Summary
Chapter 2: Building Your First Electron Application
Introducing the sample application
Setting up the development environment
Summary
Chapter 3: Tooling and Debugging
Debugging an Electron application
Debugging with Visual Studio Code
Summary
Chapter 4: Using Angular 2 with Electron
Introducing the Facebook Graph API
Implementing oAuth authentication with Electron
Summary
Chapter 5: Crafting User Interface
Introducing Photon kit
Building a user interface with React desktop
Summary
Chapter 6: Using Node.js with Electron
Managing data stores
Using ORM with Electron
Accessing hardware
Using TypeScript and ES2015 with Electron
Summary
Chapter 7: Deep Dive into Electron API - 1
Inter-process communication with IPC module
Defining custom protocols
Sessions and cookies
Session
Native system dialogs
Working with clipboard
Managing display and power sleep mode
Monitoring power changes
Networking from the main process
Summary
Chapter 8: Exploring Electron API - 2
Managing the web page using webContents
Extended Node.js process 
Customizing the browser window
Working with the shell
Controlling the application life cycle using app module
Summary
Chapter 9: Integrating with Desktop Environments
Introduction to desktop integration
Managing task list, recent documents, and the dock menu
Thumbnail toolbars
Managing display properties
Dealing with tray icons
Managing application logs
Running Electron application as Windows service
Universal Windows platform
Summary
Chapter 10: Dealing with Web Standards
Service workers
Adding push notifications
Summary
Chapter 11: Testing Electron Application
Introduction to JavaScript testing
Introduction to Spectron
Using ESNext in test cases
Using Chai as Promised
Summary
Chapter 12: Packaging and Distributing the Application
Building and packaging the Electron application
Packaging the Electron into asar archive 
Automating the build process
Summary

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

Authors

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introducing Electron
Why desktop applications?
History of Electron
Introducing Electron
Accessing operating system APIs
Building a hello world application using Electron
Summary
Chapter 2: Building Your First Electron Application
Introducing the sample application
Setting up the development environment
Summary
Chapter 3: Tooling and Debugging
Debugging an Electron application
Debugging with Visual Studio Code
Summary
Chapter 4: Using Angular 2 with Electron
Introducing the Facebook Graph API
Implementing oAuth authentication with Electron
Summary
Chapter 5: Crafting User Interface
Introducing Photon kit
Building a user interface with React desktop
Summary
Chapter 6: Using Node.js with Electron
Managing data stores
Using ORM with Electron
Accessing hardware
Using TypeScript and ES2015 with Electron
Summary
Chapter 7: Deep Dive into Electron API - 1
Inter-process communication with IPC module
Defining custom protocols
Sessions and cookies
Session
Native system dialogs
Working with clipboard
Managing display and power sleep mode
Monitoring power changes
Networking from the main process
Summary
Chapter 8: Exploring Electron API - 2
Managing the web page using webContents
Extended Node.js process 
Customizing the browser window
Working with the shell
Controlling the application life cycle using app module
Summary
Chapter 9: Integrating with Desktop Environments
Introduction to desktop integration
Managing task list, recent documents, and the dock menu
Thumbnail toolbars
Managing display properties
Dealing with tray icons
Managing application logs
Running Electron application as Windows service
Universal Windows platform
Summary
Chapter 10: Dealing with Web Standards
Service workers
Adding push notifications
Summary
Chapter 11: Testing Electron Application
Introduction to JavaScript testing
Introduction to Spectron
Using ESNext in test cases
Using Chai as Promised
Summary
Chapter 12: Packaging and Distributing the Application
Building and packaging the Electron application
Packaging the Electron into asar archive 
Automating the build process
Summary

Book Details

ISBN 139781786464125
Paperback344 pages
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From 3 reviews

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