Talk given at Fullstack Academy on Feb 16, 2016.

1. Electron
Build desktop apps using javascript

2. Me

3. Greg Lamp
● Founder/CTO of Yhat
● github.com/glamp
Here I am on the Internet.
Hi, I’m Greg!

4. - Founded in 2013
- HQ in DUMBO
- (Mighty) Team of 11
- Investors

5. Agenda
- Intro to Electron
- How Yhat uses Electron: Rodeo
- Project structure & Hello World
- Build our own Chat app

6. Electron

8. How it
works

12. You might
use Electron
everyday

13. Use Cases

14. Single page
apps with
long session
duration

15. Shortcut
heavy apps

16. Heavy local
file usage

17. Electron
at Yhat

19. Quick
Demo

20. Under the
Hood

29. I sometimes
work on Rodeo.
I work on
Rodeo.

30. First App

32. Project Structure
- Entrypoint / Back-end
- Static assets: HTML, js, css
- node_modules

33. node server

34. node server
Electron
backend

35. Project Structure
- Entrypoint / Back-end
- Static assets: HTML, js, css
- node_modules

37. Project Structure
- Entrypoint / Back-end
- Static assets: HTML, js, css
- node_modules

40. node V8
≠
electron V8
Gotcha

42. electron-
rebuild

43. Project Structure
- Entrypoint / Back-end
- Static assets: HTML, js, css
- node_modules

44. Hello
Electron!

46. Roll your
own Chat

49. Quick
Demo

52. Packaging
&
Distribution

53. Release Steps
- Package
- Sign
- Installer

54. electron-packager
Release Steps
- Package
- Sign
- Installer

57. Release Steps
- Package
- Sign
- Installer
nothing...yet

58. Release Steps
- Package
- Sign
- Installer electron-builder

60. Auto-Updates

61. Squirrel
Auto-updating framework for native apps

62. Hey Squirrel, I’m
running version
Rodeo v1.1.0!

63. https://rodeo-auto-update.herokuapp.com?version=1.1.0&platform=osx

64. There’s a new
version. Here’s the
link to download it!

65. {
"version": "1.2.1",
"url": "http://yhat.com/Rodeo-v1.2.1-darwin_64.zip"
}

67. Gotchas
- Must be a .zip
- Must be over https
- Must be signed
- Testing is a pain

68. Putting it all
together

69. http://bird-chat.s3.amazonaws.com/BirdChat.dmg
yhat.com/BirdChat

70. Electron
- Build desktop apps in javascript
- Makes the hard stuff easy
- Check out Rodeo ;)

71. Thanks!
https://github.com/glamp/electron-chat-demo/
https://github.com/glamp/chat-server/
https://github.com/glamp/electron-hello-world

72. Other Resources
● https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome-electron
● http://electron.atom.io/
● https://github.com/maxogden/electron-packager
● https://www.npmjs.com/package/electron-builder

73. Appendix