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Electron

Original author(s)	GitHub
Developer(s)	OpenJS Foundation
Initial release	15 July 2013; 11 years ago (2013-07-15)
Stable release	33.0.0  / 14 October 2024; 2 months ago (14 October 2024)
Preview release	34.0.0-alpha.1 / October 15, 2024; 2 months ago (2024-10-15)
Repository	github.com/electron/electron
Written in	C++, JavaScript, Objective-C++ and Objective-C
Operating system	Linux, macOS, and Windows
Platform	IA-32, x86-64, ARM
License	MIT License
Website	www.electronjs.org

Electron (formerly known as Atom Shell) is a free and open-source software framework developed and maintained by OpenJS Foundation. The framework is designed to create desktop applications using web technologies (mainly HTML, CSS and JavaScript, although other technologies such as front-end frameworks and WebAssembly are possible) that are rendered using a version of the Chromium browser engine and a back end using the Node.js runtime environment. It also uses various APIs to enable functionality such as native integration with Node.js services and an inter-process communication module.

Electron was originally built for Atom and is the main GUI framework behind several other open-source projects including GitHub Desktop, Light Table, Visual Studio Code, WordPress Desktop, and Eclipse Theia.

Architecture

Electron applications include a "main" process and several "renderer" processes. The main process runs the logic for the application (e.g., menus, shell commands, lifecycle events), and can then launch multiple renderer processes by instantiating an instance of the BrowserWindow class, which loads a window that appears on the screen by rendering HTML and CSS.

Both the main and renderer processes can run with Node.js integration if the nodeIntegration field in the main process is set to true.

Most of Electron's APIs are written in C++ or Objective-C and are exposed directly to the application code through JavaScript bindings.

History

In September 2021, Electron moved to an eight-week release cycle between major versions to match the release cycle of Chromium Extended Stable and to comply with a new requirement from the Microsoft Store that requires browser-based apps to be within two major versions of the latest release of the browser engine.

Electron frequently releases new major versions along every other Chromium release. The latest three stable versions are supported by the Electron team.

Usage

Desktop applications built with Electron include Atom, balenaEtcher, Eclipse Theia, Microsoft Teams before 2.0, Slack, and Visual Studio Code. The Brave browser was based on Electron before it was rewritten to use Chromium directly.

Reception

The most common criticism of Electron is that it necessitates software bloat when used for simple programs. As a result, Michael Larabel has referred to the framework as "notorious among most Linux desktop users for being resource heavy, not integrating well with most desktops, and generally being despised." Researchers have shown that Electron's large feature set can be hijacked by bad actors with write access to the source JavaScript files. This requires root access on *nix systems and is not considered to be a vulnerability by the Electron developers. Those who are concerned that Electron is not always based on the newest version of Chromium have recommended progressive web applications as an alternative.

See also

• Apache Cordova
• Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF)
• HTML Application
• Qt WebEngine
• XULRunner
• JavaFX WebView
• DotNetBrowser
• Progressive web app
• Node.js
• Tauri (software framework)
• Flutter
• PyQt

References

1. "electron/electron". GitHub. Archived from the original on 2 August 2016. Retrieved 8 May 2018.
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4. "electron/LICENSE at master". GitHub. Archived from the original on 12 May 2017. Retrieved 3 July 2020.
5. ^ Sawicki, Kevin (23 April 2015). "Atom Shell is now Electron". Electron. Archived from the original on 9 November 2017. Retrieved 6 January 2022.
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8. Horner, Gabriel (10 December 2015). "Light Table 0.8.0". lighttable.com. Archived from the original on 13 December 2015. Retrieved 3 July 2020.
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29. "Etcher on GitHub". GitHub. Archived from the original on 16 November 2018. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
30. msdmaguire. "How Microsoft Teams uses memory - Microsoft Teams". docs.microsoft.com. Archived from the original on 8 December 2020. Retrieved 12 November 2021.
31. Redmond, Tony (25 June 2021). "Teams 2.0 Moves Away from Electron to Embrace Edge WebView2". Office 365 for IT Pros. Retrieved 2 August 2024.
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External links

• Official website

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Category

• 2013 software
• Cross-platform desktop-apps development
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