NeutralinoJS: an native cross platform application development framework.
The idea of developing desktop applications is nothing new, by far it has been around for over a few decades now. There are tons of frameworks and libraries, that you can read numerous books upon them, and ever write one.
This is nothing new, it has existed from the very early days but with every passing day there is an effort to make simplified tools or libraries to tackle this problem. We are moving towards an age, where we strive to create more generic libraries, tools, technologies. This comes bundled with a goal to use same technologies over projects. Now, we don’t learn skill ‘A’ to be used in project A only but, in projects B, C, D. as well.
In this process, most used technologies are often picked up and used to create new frameworks and tools. The case with Neutralino is same. It uses web technologies (HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc.) to build desktop applications. So, if you have ever built a website or done something with HTML, you can create a desktop application.
This been said, if you are someone who develop desktop apps, you know this approach is not new, it has been tried in the past. There are frameworks like, Electron, Nw.js and few more, which are built to tackle same issue.
It can be said that, Neutralino apps do exactly the same thing, but here is a catch: Neutralino is purely native, and neutralino apps use pure native features, they can run run inside your browser, or in a native window. The difference being that, they don’t run on top of chromium, and you don’t require NodeJs or any other dependencies to run them.
This finally provides a few perks, which makes it a better alternative to Electron:
- The resulting apps are lightweight.
- They are faster in comparison to, an app running in a browser instance.
- You don’t have to package a browser with your app to run it.
- They can run in a browser or as a standalone app, the choice is yours.
- Your apps are reusable, you can run a website reusing the code you built your app with (or just do the opposite).
View more about Neutralino: https://neutralino.js.org
View Source: https://github.com/neutralinojs/neutralino
View Docs: https://neutralino.js.org/docs/
