Electron is a javascript framework to develop desktop applications. In this presentation we will discuss from a performance perspective, how we can solve different challenges involved in a desktop application.

1. High performance
desktop applications
With Electron
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2. About me 2
• Application developer for the past 12 years
• Works for Sahaj Software solutions (http://sahajsoft.com)
• Contributor to open source projects (https://github.com/mangroveorg/
datawinners)
• Likes to focus on technologies that can solve complex problems in a simple
way
• Worked extensively in ReactJS, Node and Javascript heavy applications
• Currently developing desktop applications for different clients

3. What is Electron
INTRODUCTION
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4. Advantage
Common Desktop application issues
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5. Hello World
LET’S START
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6. Hello World - Demo
LET’S START
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7. Understanding Behind the scenes7

8. Devtron - Demo
LET’S START
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9. ❌It is not
• GUI (Graphical User interface) Library
✅It is
• Runtime on top of NodeJS runtime
• minimal Chromium browser
(libchromiumcontent - a lightweight /
single shared lib - includes all it’s
dependencies)
Fundamentals
Coming back
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10. Who is using Electron
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11. 11

12. 12

13. 13

14. 14Advantage
What kind of problems electron can solve
Distributed applications
• thick clients
• sync with central server
• bring down the load on server side
• huge performance benefits both on client side and server
side
• example - Financial trading domain, Retail domain (point of
sale systems)

15. 15Advantage
What kind of problems electron can solve
Offline applications
• geographical locations (countries) where internet penetration
is less
• domains where problem logic can be handled on the client
side itself - example - Tax computation application - rules are
predefined and can be computed on the client side, at least
partially.
• Save and resume applications - example - editing a large
document and resuming the work (multiple days) and finally
submitting to server

16. 16Advantage
What kind of problems electron can solve
Computation heavy applications
• Data analytics and visualisation needs on client specific data
• Raw Data can be delivered to the client app from server and
thick client can take care to performing computations on top
of it
• Media processing (audio, video, image) are CPU and
memory intensive.

17. 17Advantage
Performance Benefits
existing performance improvement methods on High performance desktop

18. 18Advantage
Performance Benefits
Chrome’s V8 engine - high-level overview
- will come here
how electron can take advantage of chromium
- to achieve best performance
- low memory footprint

19. Showcase 19
Space radar
- Hard disk space analyser
- D3js based visualisations on top of the
analytics
- An open source electron application
- Available in github - https://github.com/
sairamindia/space-radar
- Forked from - https://github.com/zz85/space-
radar

20. Showcase 20

21. Node’s Event driven architecture
bringing it to Desktop apps
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- Node’s EventEmitter - overview
- How to take advantage of EventEmitters in
electron
- Demo of a simple app
- Async method invocation and how it can
benefit desktop apps

22. 22Advantage
Performance Challenges
- different challenges involved in Desktop apps
- Areas to focus to improve performance

23. 23Follow up
Resources
• https://github.com/sairamindia/space-radar
• https://github.com/sairamindia/electron_tutorials

24. 24To conclude
Summary
Let’s bring the best of web to
the desktop