As web developers, we're accustomed to the freedom and flexibility of web technologies. When building desktop applications with Electron, it's natural to leverage these same skills. However, the desktop environment presents unique challenges and opportunities. To ensure your Electron app feels native, performs well, and is maintainable, it's crucial to adopt best practices for your web UI.
- Embrace a UI Framework/Library: While you can build UIs with vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, it quickly becomes unwieldy for complex applications. Frameworks like React, Vue, or Angular, or even UI component libraries like Material-UI, Ant Design, or Bootstrap, can significantly streamline development, enforce consistency, and improve maintainability. They provide pre-built components, state management solutions, and a structured approach to building your interface.
import React from 'react';
import Button from '@mui/material/Button';
function MyButton() {
return (
<Button variant="contained">Click Me</Button>
);
}- Consider Native Look and Feel: Users expect desktop applications to behave in certain ways. While you have the freedom to create entirely custom UIs, consider incorporating elements that are familiar to users on their operating system. This can include using standard window controls (minimize, maximize, close), respecting system font sizes, and adhering to platform-specific design conventions where appropriate. Electron's
nativeThememodule can help you adapt your app's styling to the user's system theme.
const { nativeTheme } = require('electron');
const isDarkMode = nativeTheme.shouldUseDarkColors;
if (isDarkMode) {
document.body.classList.add('dark-mode');
} else {
document.body.classList.remove('dark-mode');
}
nativeTheme.on('updated', () => {
// Re-apply theme logic
});- Optimize for Performance: Desktop applications often handle larger datasets and more complex operations than typical web pages. Performance is paramount for a good user experience. This means:
- Efficient DOM Manipulation: Avoid unnecessary re-renders. Frameworks with virtual DOMs (like React and Vue) are excellent for this.
- Lazy Loading: Load components and data only when they are needed.
- Asynchronous Operations: Offload heavy tasks to background processes or the Node.js side of Electron to keep the UI thread responsive.
- Debouncing and Throttling: Use these techniques for event handlers that might fire rapidly (e.g., window resizing, input typing).