How to develop Desktop Apps using HTML/CSS/JavaScript?

javascript html css desktop-application
TK123 picture TK123 · Sep 2, 2012 · Viewed 161.1k times · Source

First, I'm not interested in doing this professionally. I am a web developer, a coworker of mine recently left for Spotify and said he will be working mostly in JavaScript for the Spotify Desktop app. He said it uses "Chrome frame" and everything inside is done like a web app (HTML/JS/CSS).

As a web developer who never built anything for Desktop, this is great news. If I can use the technologies I already know and implement them inside some sort of a "frame" and still be able to build a windows or better yet cross platform app.

I know I didn't mention anything about the database, but even a simple hello world desktop app with web technologies would be great to get going.

So how does one go about this? Exactly what do I need/need to know?

Answer

Alfred picture Alfred · Sep 2, 2012

You may start with Titanium for desktop dev. Also you may have a look at Chromium Embedded Framework. It's basically a web browser control based on chromium.

It's written in C++ so you can do all the low level OS stuff you want(Growl, tray icons, local file access, com ports, etc) in your container app, and then all the application logic and gui in html/javascript. It allows you to intercept any http request to either serve local resources or perform some custom action. For example, a request to http://localapp.com/SetTrayIconState?state=active could be intercepted by the container and then call the C++ function to update the tray icon.

It also allows you to create functions that can be called directly from JavaScript.

It's very difficult to debug JavaScript directly in CEF. There's no support for anything like Firebug.

You may also try AppJS.com (Helps to build Desktop Applications. for Linux, Windows and Mac using HTML, CSS and JavaScript)

Also, as pointed out by @Clint, the team at brackets.io (Adobe) created an awesome shell using Chromium Embedded Framework that makes it much easier to get started. It is called the brackets shell: github.com/adobe/brackets-shell Find out more about it here: clintberry.com/2013/html5-desktop-apps-with-brackets-shell

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