Electron (software framework)

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 Web Assembly 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 open-source projects including Atom, GitHub Desktop, Light Table, Visual Studio Code, WordPress Desktop and Eclipse Theia. 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 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 field in the main process is set to . Most of Electron's APIs are written in C++ or Objective-C and are exposed directly to the application code through JavaScript bindings. 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 version are supported by the Electron team. List of software using Electron Desktop applications built with Electron include Atom, balenaEtcher, Eclipse Theia, Microsoft Teams, Slack and Visual Studio Code.