An In-Depth Comparison Of Software Frameworks For Developing Desktop Applications Using Web Technologies

Today JavaScript is one of the most popular and fastest growing programming languages. Initially designed as a web browser scripting language, its adoption has reached beyond web pages: the Internet of Things, mobile and desktop applications. Lately, an increased interest can be observed over developing desktop software using JavaScript and other web technologies such as HTML and CSS. Many popular software products followed this path: Skype, Visual Studio Code, Atom, Brackets, Light Table, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft SQL Operations Studio, GitHub Desktop, Signal, etc. The aim of this article is to aid developers to choose the right framework for their needs, through a comprehensive side-by-side comparison of Electron and NW.js, the two frameworks available for developing desktop software with JavaScript, HTML and CSS. Electron despite being a younger project. It was concluded in this article that this software framework outperforms NW.js in the matter of capabilities on most areas such as file system, user interface, system integration and multimedia; except printing. However, NW.js is easier to use and debug.