The Electron JavaScript framework developed by GitHub is available in version 11. 0. The most important innovation is the support of the ARM-based processors from Apple, which the Californians under the names M1 and Apple Silicon since November 2020 instead of Intel chips in their Install devices. From now on there are two separate versions of Electron for Mac computers with Intel processors (x 64) and those with Apple’s new M1 hardware (ARM 64).

As breaking Change, the Electron team removed some experimental APIs: BrowserView. {FromId, fromWebContents, getAllViews} and the id – Property of the BrowserView are omitted in Electron 11. 0.

New crash report for the JavaScript engine V8 The release also includes updates for Chromium 86 and 87, for Node.js and for the JavaScript and WebAssembly Engine V8 developed in Google’s Chromium project. The latter receives new crashReport parameters with notifications and information on localizing a failure. The updated crash messages are intended to provide more information than before. Details can be found in the entry for the crashReport for V8 on GitHub.

The version series Electron 8.x reaches with the release of 11. 0 their end-of-life, versions 9.x and higher continue to receive support. According to the blog entry, the team is still working on removing the remote modules from version 9 – from version 14 the remote module should be omitted entirely. The team has been developing native node modules for Electron since Electron 6. The work on it should be completed in the coming release 12 – the planned release date is March 2nd 2021 announced.

Platform-neutral HTML applications with Electron Electron packages web applications in desktop programs that run on Windows, Linux and macOS. Existing web applications can be used unchanged as a renderer process; resources of the local system are integrated into the main process. Developers can use Chrome’s developer tools for troubleshooting, and suitable Electron components are available for testing and approval. In-depth information is provided by an article written by Philip Ackermann on the development of desktop applications with JavaScript.

An overview of the most important innovations in the new main version is provided by the Announcement in the blog entry of Electron.js. If you want to find out about all the changes and repairs in Electron 11. 0, you will find it in the release notes on GitHub. Curious noses can already look into the crystal ball at Electron: On GitHub you can see which breaking changes are planned in the future.

(sih)