News has arrived that many developers are going to love. And that is that Electron this great cross-platform application framework has released a new version. So, this post, is to tell you a little bit about Electron 9.0 and its news.
Nowadays it’s unlikely that you do not know what Electron is, but we will explain to you briefly. Electron is a framework that uses web technologies to create desktop applications with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. Along with a mix of NodeJS.
Many applications that are already part of our daily lives, such as Visual Studio Code or Twitch have been created with this framework. This shows us that it is a very reliable option to make our desktop applications.
Electron 9.0 features
With this release, Electron also leaves the support for branch 6. So you were still using it, you have to upgrade quickly.
The most important new feature of this new version is that they now use Chromium 83, NodeJS 12.14.1, and V8.3 so you can expect internal improvements of many kinds.
Moreover, Electron 9.0 restores the support for pdfium-based PDF viewer. A feature that will make life easier for many developers.
Also it has to be said that this new version has taken care of the performance in Linux. This is something that applications created with Electron suffer. Well, from now on applications created with Electron 9 should go much better.
Others important news are:
- Removed deprecated .getWebContents().
- Removed the deprecated ‘setLayoutZoomLevelLimits’ method.
- IPC between main and renderer processes now uses the Structured Clone Algorithm.
- Multiple improvements to the spellchecker feature.
This version also features many security and performance bugs, as well as bug fixes that affect the operation of the same.
- WebRequest module not working with file:// protocol.
- WebRequest not working for CORS requests.
- Fixed win.setMenuBarVisibility(false) not hiding menu bar.
- Fixed possible freeze on window with disabled background throttling.
- Also, fixed the print button functionality in the PDF viewer extension.
So, that’s a lot of important novelties.
Conclusion
Electron is one of the most important frameworks for building desktop applications but using web technologies. This shows that every day more web and desktop converge.
With version 9.0 of Electron advances in the stability and security of applications created. Especially in Linux where there is a significant improvement in performance.
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More info: here and Release Notes for 9.0.0
