I have been asked to create a desktop app and I have 2 months to do it? Is there any other framework I can use that is suitable for 2017?
I have built a couple of apps with electron, i loved building it. Am a web developer who predominantly codes front end with angular and backend with node, it was so easy for me to jump in and start building it. Their Docs were great most of the things are self explanatory. The community is good , there are lot of answers you could find in stack overflow. I haven't had any issues with electron so far other few performance problems with webview. Just go for it :)
1) I'd call it a runtime environment, not a framework. But then people seem to be throwing the word "framework" at everything now DESPITE the negative connotation piles of crap like jQuery and Bootcrap have given it.
2) If all you know right now is client-side web development languages, it's the fast-track to making a cross platform desktop app.
The question is if you should choose it over nw.js -- and that comes down to your needs. Electron has somewhat better (IMHO) docs, a more helpful community (where people will ACTUALLY try and help instead of trying to blow smoke up your arse whilst trying to sell you something), and if you're going to use webframe/<webview> their implementation is a bit more robust exposing more of the underlying blink object.
With either electron or nw.js, if you can build a website and a basic command of JavaScript, you can probably figure out how to use it.
My advice would be to just dive straight into the documentation and get going...
Unless you don't know HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, in which case learn to build interactive websites first.
Side note -- I am a bit pissed with them though they've gone NPM on the distribution model and made it harder to find the standalone installers which are a thousand times simpler.
AP Pranav
Jason Knight
The less code you use, the less there is to break
Brandon
Frontend Developer
Electron makes cross-platform development simple, especially if you're already familiar with web development.
There are some issues to be aware of but plenty of people have created documentation around that.
Here are some (slightly older) articles to help get you started: