GitHub has released version 1.0 of Electron, its open source framework for cross platform development of desktop applications, formerly known as Atom Shell.

Initially developed for GitHub's Atom editor, Electron is a framework for creating native applications with web technologies like JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.

As related in this video Electron's claim is that it:

takes care of the hard parts so you can focus on the core of your application 

Electron, or rather Atom Shell, was initially released when Atom was first launched. According to the blog post announcing the release of Atom 1.0 it has been downloaded over 1.2 million times in the subsequent 2 years with both open source projects and companies using it. Microsoft, for example, used it to build its open source Visual Studio Code.

Along with the 1.0 release comes the Electron API Demos app containing code snippets to help you get your app started, including a Quick Start app and tips on effectively using the Electron APIs.

Devtron, an open-source extension to Chrome Developer Tools, designed to help you inspect, debug and troubleshoot your Electron app, has also been released. It facilities are:  

• Require graph that helps you visualize your app’s internal and external library dependencies in both the main and renderer processes
• IPC monitor that tracks and displays the messages sent and received between the processes in your app
• Event inspector that shows you the events and listeners that are registered in your app on the core Electron APIs such as the window, app, and processes
• App Linter that checks your apps for common mistakes and missing functionality

There's also new version of the integration testing framework for Electron apps, Spectron 3.0. Based on ChromeDriver and WebDriverIO Spectron has support for the entire Electron API allowing you to more quickly write tests that verify your application’s behavior in various scenarios and environments.

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