Electron. Holy crap. ELECTRON

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I just discovered this today. Hopefully there are some of you who were also completely oblivious to it until right now, because I kinda enjoy spreading that joy of discovering new awesome things. :wink:

So yeah, Electron!

And of course, the gears were turning and I naturally thought, Hey, I wonder if I could combine Electron with Meteor.

Yes, you can. (shout out to @sircharleswatson)

I tried to take things a step further and wire up React, but it failed. I’m sure it’s doable, and that I was just doing something wrong.

Anyway, spread the knowledge! And if anyone knows of other ways to use Meteor to build desktop apps, I’d love to hear about it.

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Oh wow, I’ve never even heard of that! :open_mouth:

Would be crazy cool to just have this as a meteor platform like meteor add-platform ios.

E.g. meteor add-platform desktop

Me want!

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Dude meteor add-platform desktop would be long drawn dream fulfilled. So excited for the future.

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Thanks for the mention @ffxsam

Also, just so you guys know, a couple people want to help me make ‘meteor add-platform desktop’ a reality. We are beginning work on that today.

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Oh wow, thats awesome to hear!
Will you use Electron or something similar for that?

Anyway:
Wish you all the best for this project!

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i think it will continue to use Electron. Unless a better solution is presented.

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I’ve personally tried a few things to make desktop work. But have only succeeded in leaderboard app using this.

I’ve tried electron too but I am was not experienced enough to make it a dream come true…

@sircharleswatson Please make it work!

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Looks some awesome technology there, and adding as a platform would be epic!

@sircharleswatson How can people help? get invovled?

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How does this compare to Node Webkit?

Yes, I agree, an integration like meteor add-platform desktop would be great, but maybe it’s easier with a platform that’s already using Node.js as its own basis. But maybe Electron does use Node.js as well, haven’t digged deep enough into the docs. Anyway, thanks for sharing this.

EDIT: It’s already stated on the homepage that it’s using Node.js and Chromium as well. Cool.

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I could see it as more specific as it is with ios/android:

meteor add-platform mac-desktop
meteor add-platform windows-desktop
meteor add-platform linux-desktop

I wonder if MDG would officially get involved?

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We’re looking into the possibilities of getting in it but it’s just a thought at this point. I do still want to make it as easy to use as possible, even if it doesn’t get into core.

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Pair that with Phone Gap for mobile and the ubiquity of web browsers in general, and JavaScript might be the first real language to make good on Java’s original promise:

Write once; Run everywhere.

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@waldgeist

How does this compare to Node Webkit?

See their docs on Technical differences to NW.js (formerly node-webkit)

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Thanks for this link!

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And then we’d have 4 platforms!

  1. Web
  2. iOS
  3. Android
  4. Desktop

What a world that would be!

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It’s actually more than 4 platforms, as Desktop would comprise Windows, Mac, and Linux at least. What a crazy world of opportunities…

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I am submitting a PR to meteor to add the desktop platform. It’s actually almost done. It’s similar to the mobile client-only build.
Hope they accept it…

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WOW! @corvid keep us posted :smile:

https://sonnekfit.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/anchorman.jpg

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I recently gave a Devshop talk about building a very simple Dropbox clone using Meteor and Electron: https://goo.gl/uxx9RH

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Can you post the link to your PR (i couldn’t find it) as i’d love to test out your branch.