I have an web app (WebGL/HTML5/JS) that is very computationally demanding. I want to turn this into a desktop app. I have heard of app.js, http://appjs.com but the problem here will be WebGL ?
The reason I want to turn it into a desktop app is because I want to call unix system commands.
Thanks
Electron would probably be a better choice since it is still actively maintained and AppJS is not. Electron is Chromium based so it supports WebGL. Here is an example of using WebGL with Electron.
NW.js is a similar project. There are some technical reasons that you might want to prefer Electron over NW.js.
Both give you access to Node, so you should be able to call system commands using the child process module.
Related
I've HTML application build with AngularJS/jQuery/Bootstrap with AJAX REST API.
Is it possible to create executable/installer for Windows operating system?
Without any 3rd-party software, it should look like native application, but HTML.
For example, Slack messenger has web/mac/windows versions and they look same.
Any ideas?
// UPD
I probably need a wrapper (webview), but I need all features for EcmaScript5/CSS3.
Electron is the easiest way:
1. Install electron
2. Create and edit main.js:
const electron = require('electron');
const { app, BrowserWindow } = electron;
let mainWindow;
app.on('ready', () => {
mainWindow = new BrowserWindow({
width: 1000,
height: 700
});
mainWindow.setTitle('title of the desktop app');
mainWindow.loadURL('http://www.yourwebpage.com');
mainWindow.on('closed', () => {
mainWindow = null;
});
});
3. Execute desktop app:
electron main.js
And to build the app, use a builder such as electron-builder.
Hope that helps you!
(Full disclosure, I'm the founder of ToDesktop, I'll try to be objective and unbiased here.)
As usual in Computer Science, the answer is "it depends"!
The first question that you should ask yourself is: Who is the desktop app being used by? Just you? Or, are you distributing the app to customers? Because these two segments have very different needs.
Just you
There are a lot of options here (in no particular order):
Nativefier — The obvious option. Lots of configuration options, lots of contributors, open source and regularly updated. This should probably be the default option if you want to whip up an app just for yourself.
WebDGap — This is a lovely project but it is a little old and "as of April 13th, 2018 WebDGap is no longer an active project.". It should also be noted that this is built on an old version of node-webkit and not Electron.
Web2Desk — Great option if you don't want to mess around with the command-line. It uses Nativefier under-the-hood. It is free with a splash screen or $19 with the splash screen removed.
Do-it-yourself with Electron — The basics were covered quite well in this earlier answer. I like this option because it gives you complete flexibility to take the project wherever you like and you'll learn a bit of Electron too.
Fluid App — This is Mac only but otherwise it's a lovely solution and super easy. It's free for the standard version, there is also a $5 version which includes features like fullscreen.
Flotato — Mac only again but this is a really interesting approach. Simply clone the app and give it a name like docs.google.com, it will then turn into Google Docs. At the time of writing this, it's in pre-release (not released yet) but I'll be watching this closely, it's very cool.
ToDesktop — ToDesktop will work but it's probably a bit overkill if you're creating a personal app. Also, it's probably a bit too expensive for this use-case. ToDesktop is targeted at creating a desktop app for distribution to customers (more about that below).
Distributing to customers
There are a few extra considerations which become more important when creating a desktop app for distribution to your customers:
Installer — Mac users expect a "drag to applications" DMG file. Windows users expect an installer and they also expect to be able to uninstall it from the control panel.
Code Signing — If your app isn't code signed then by default Windows Authenticode and Apple Gatekeeper will prevent your desktop app from being opened.
Auto-update — There is still a web browser running "underneath" your desktop app, it's important to keep this updated for two reasons. 1. Security issues + vulnerabilities should be patched over time. 2. You don't want to be stuck supporting an old web browser in 5 years time because your desktop app's browser hasn't been updated
The tools mentioned above don't offer these features, so they're not really suitable for the use-case of distributing your app to customers. These are the features that we wanted to add when building ToDesktop, so I think it fits this use-case quite nicely. We're adding features all the time, last week we added support for App Protocols and Deeplinks.
I myself was looking for an all around solution for awhile. I tried everything from TideSDK, AppJS, Appcelerator Titanium, native code in VB.NET, XCode, Python, C++, Electron, node-webkit, etc: Basically you name it I've tried it.
Note Electron is nice, but it only runs on 64bit processors. So node-webkit is good if you want to run your app on 32bit processors.
So I decided to build my own open source solution called WebDGap.
Currently WebDGap runs on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Google Chrome and as a web application!
Watch the How To Video to learn, well how to use the app obviously.
Here's a screenshot.
Being that you're a Mac user already you can merge your exported app into 1 .app mac file. This can be done with Automator (and a little shell scripting).
There's also a coding playground I made for mobile users that has this feature built in called kodeWeave.
Here's a Tic-Tac-Toe game I'm going to export as a Mac App:
Now the web app is running as a native Mac application!
The most easiest and quickest way i know is to use nodejs/npm’s nativefier library which underlying electronjs . It will just take 5 min to create executable for windows. Even a person who do not have programming experience can create desktop application from web application. Below mentioned post has described the steps to convert web application to desktop application. Must read !
Convert any web application to desktop application in 2 min using npm’s nativefier
There are a ton of frameworks out there that can wrap your web app into a native application that can access things like the file storage API for an operating system. This is the specific guide for Windows.
BEWARE THOUGH - you will need to spend time doing solid testing and QA work for your native app so it doesn't feel like a website inside a native wrapper, as well as integrates well with all versions of the OS you want to be compatible with. Tweetdeck for Mac is an example of what not to do - basically a web browser in a native wrapper).
Use Web2Desk: If you are looking for Free and Simple solution.
wherein all you need to do is enter the URL of the web app (or website) and Desktop app for Mac, Windows, and Linux is generated in no time.
With a bit of wrapper code you could package it as a Chrome App. They do not need to run in a browser window but have all the capabilities of a web app, standalone.
https://developer.chrome.com/apps/about_apps
Best Way to Convert Web to Exe is using nativefier:
nativefier --name "Inventory Management System" "http://localhost/php_stock_zip/php_stock_zip/php_stock/" -i ./icon.png -p windows
Steps:
Press Win+x
Press C
Type
nativefier
Installation Requirements
* macOS 10.9+ / Windows / Linux
* Node.js >=6 (4.x may work but is no longer tested, please upgrade)
See optional dependencies for more
Step 5: npm install nativefier -g
Finally type nativefier "Web Link"
I make these browser scripts in JavaScript and use them in tamper monkey or the console. I make these scripts for various tasks like automating different functions on websites that are not mine. I was wondering if there is a way to use these scripts without the browser but as a desktop application. I have heard about node.js and hopefully I can use it for what I want. I'm not really familiar with node.js but use applications made by node.
Thanks!
nodejs isn't really what you are looking for even though what you are looking to do can be accomplished using libraries written for nodejs. Look into PhantomJS and Selenium (webdriver.io)
Currently speaking you can't do that with desktop applications made with Native APIs like .NET Windows Applications or Cocoa OSX applications, because what you're doing with TamperMonkey is manipulating the Webpage(DOM) which is usually not accessible, when it is there in desktop applications.
The only desktop apps you might be able to do that on, are Electron apps since they're using the DOM, if you have access to the dev tools in the app you can run JavaScript just like in Chrome dev tools.
Look into AutoHotkey for automating keystrokes and mouse clicks if you're on Windows, see if it might help you automate according to your needs.
I'd like to make a GUI in Electron for a Desktop Application written in Go (currently it's a command line tool).
What's the convention for communicating between the Electron and Go processes?
Would simply using the Go binary as an API work? Some sort of websocket communication?
You can use go-astilectron it allows you to build cross-platform GUI apps with GO and HTML/JS/CSS (powered by Electron) (disclosure: I'm the author)
The interaction of an application written in electron with its backend is exactly like a Web browser, therefore you have the same options (Web Api, Web Sockets, Ajax, etc.)
You can execute your command line app from your Electron app via child_process.spawn and communicate with it via stdin/stdout.
Murlock
Is an Electron wrapper for Golang to make it easy for this kind of app for Mac. They're working on Windows and looking for contributions for the other platforms.
Similarly to Murlock, may I dare to suggest Webview library. It's a thin wrapper over Webkit and MSHTML that runs on Windows 7+, MacOS, Linux and OpenBSD.
It is much smaller and easier than Electron. Also the resulting apps are smaller and less memory-hungry.
You may have a look at https://github.com/zserge/webview/tree/master/examples/todo-go for a Todo app example that compiles into a small standalone binary.
I've been looking exactly on how to run ElectronJS backend with Go to build a native desktop application.
you can use extraResources with process.resourcesPath variable to get into the Resources folder. and execute your binary. its not very recommended though.
Other option to use: https://github.com/wailsapp/wails
Its very lightweight and can export your app to MacOS and Windows.
Checkout muon which is best described by their readme:
Muon is a lightweight alternative to Electron written in Golang in about ~300 LoC, using Ultralight instead of Chromium. Ultralight is a cross-platform WebKit rewrite using the GPU to target embedded desktop applications that resulted in a fast, lightweight, and low-memory HTML UI solution that blends the power of Chromium with the small footprint of Native UI.
I have not used it myself but it looks very promising!
What's the best way to turn an HTML/Javascript web app into a self-contained app that can be run from Windows (and maybe Mac/Linux) PC's? Preferably without any installation, ie a network share.
I have looked into Chrome and Firefox Portable, but these require write access to the folder, so are unsuitable for running off a read-only network share.
(some background, I have a big javascript app but many of my clients are using IE6 or 7. Their IT teams won't allow Chrome Frame, or other modern browsers).
node-webkit sounds most promising.
From the README on the github repository:
node-webkit is an app runtime based on Chromium and node.js. You can
write native apps in HTML and Javascript with node-webkit. It also
lets you to call Node.js modules directly from DOM and enables a new
way of writing native applications with all Web technologies.
If LightTable can be built with it, certainly a web application can be ported and run natively using it.
I know this is a bit late, but what about Sencha Desktop Packager?
http://www.sencha.com/products/desktop-packager
It was primarily developed for ExtJS apps, but it should work on any JavaScript app.
We had a similar requirement and ended up building a dedicated web browser using QT. However if we'd known about the Sencha Desktop Packager before we may have gone for that.
I am looking for Titanium Appcelerator alternatives for Desktop application development with HTML and JavaScript. I want to convert a web app to a desktop application. Hence, there will be a lot of server interaction. Appcelerator was a good choice, but it looks like the company is no longer interested in the Desktop SDK. Also, ajax request from Appcelerator does not retain cookies.
I read that Adobe Air can be used for desktop app development, but I don't want to use flash.
How good is XULRunner? Will it allow features like Growl notificaiton and creating tray icons?
Will I be able to develop applications using mostly Javascript and HTML in Qt?
I started looking into Titanium for desktop dev. I liked the concept but not the implementation. I then stumbled upon chromiumembedded and have been mostly very happy with it. It's basically a web browser control based on chromium.
http://code.google.com/p/chromiumembedded/
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.
My biggest challenge has been debuging. It's very difficult to debug javascript directly in CEF. There's no support for anything like Firebug that I am aware of.
Appjs (appjs.org) looks very promising.
You could also check Bowline which is another alternative: http://bowlineapp.com/.
Although it's not officially intended for general-purpose use, a number of people have had success using brackets-shell for HTML/JS desktop apps. It embeds Chromium (CEF) and adds APIs for menu bar management and file IO. It also embeds an instance of Node.js so you get access to all its APIs for launching processes, etc. It's MIT-licensed and available for Mac & Win, with a Linux version currently making rapid progress.
As I mentioned, it's not officially a general-purpose app shell, but someone wrote a detailed blog post about how to customize brackets-shell for your own uses.
I notice that the other answer about Titanum says CEF is hard to debug. I'm not sure if that's true in Titanium, but in brackets-shell it's easy to debug JS – you just open http://localhost:9234/ to load a full instance of the Chrome Developer Tools (including breakpoints, profiling, etc.).
TideSDK is a continuation of the old Titanium desktop http://www.tidesdk.org/