Learn Electron, Ember and Reactfire

Electron is a framework that makes it easy to create cross-platform desktop apps with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. Electron and open-source tools give you everything you need to create a compelling desktop app--native user interface elements like menus and dialogs, installers, auto-updates, and more. 

This course will teach you the core concepts of Electron so that you can leverage it to create your own desktop application for macOS and Windows. 

We'll go over:
- Creating user interfaces in Electron (both HTML based and native)
- Understanding Electron's multi-process architecture 
- Shipping your app to users

Electron is a framework for creating native applications with web technologies like JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.

electron

Build a desktop application with Electron

Ember is a javascript framework that provides a rich set of tools for building modern web applications. Unlike many frameworks, Ember comes with opinions and a way of doing things so you aren't left with a ton of decisions to make about problems that have already been solved very well. Ember was designed from the start to deliver a productive and comfortable experience for you, the developer.

In this course you will learn what you need to know to get started building your own Ember we applications. From the absolute essentials like creating a new project with the Ember-CLI tools, templating, routing, and reusable components.



A JavaScript framework for creating ambitious web applications.

ember

Ember 2 Fundamentals

Components in Ember are great for reusing code throughout our application. We’ll see how each instance of an Ember component has isolated state and we can over ride as well as set default values.

In this lesson, we will learn how to make a simple, reusable component within an Ember application.

Create Simple Components in Ember

In this lesson, we learn how to create nested routes and templates in an Ember.js application, in addition to how to create nested routes and isolated templates.

Creating nested routes in Ember.js

In this lesson, we will learn how templates work within Ember and how to use HTMLBars. This lesson will cover the connection between controllers and templates and how to use actions within templates as well.

Ember Templating with HTMLBars

In this lesson, we will learn how to install Ember Inspector and use it to see the state of our application and debug it.

The Ember Inspector can be installed from the [Chrome Web Store](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ember-inspector/bmdblncegkenkacieihfhpjfppoconhi). We will see how the inspector gives us access to information such as the routes available to us, the components used in a particular view, and data that is exposed to us etc.


Debug Ember Applications using Ember Inspector

In Ember.js, functions that are executed through user interaction with your application are called actions, which can be defined at the route, controller, or component level. In this tutorial, we look at a simple example of defining actions on the controller and hooking it up to our template in order to update properties on the controller.

Add user interaction to Ember.js apps using actions

In this lesson we’ll load javascript into the BrowserWindow and display the Electron version on the page. Loading javascript into Electron is almost exactly the same as loading it into the browser, however it is a best practice to use the `require` syntax.

Load JavaScript in an Electron BrowserWindow

We will learn how to install Ember-CLI and use it to create a new Ember project. We will also learn how to run the Ember project.

Create an Ember Project with the Ember-CLI

A main menu is a hallmark of native desktop applications. Electron makes it easy to create native menus and menu items in JavaScript.

We’ll go over creating a menu template using `Menu.buildFromTemplate` and then setting it as the main application menu via `Menu.setApplicationMenu`. 

Create a native desktop system menu with the Electron Menu module

In this lesson we'll learn about `dialog.showMessageBox` . This is the most basic Electron dialog but it offers lots of customization options, such as `type`, `icon`, `title`, and `buttons`. Some of these options vary by platform, so we'll also look at how things differ between Windows and Mac. 

Display native desktop dialog windows with Electron

In this video, we'll learn how to save and open a file using native dialogs in Electron. First, we'll use `dialog.showSaveDialog` to display a native save dialog and use `dialog.showErrorBox` to display an error message if the save failed. Then, we'll open the file we saved using `dialog.showOpenDialog`. Finally, we'll look at how these dialogs look on Windows vs Mac.

Save/Open a file with an Electron dialog window

Dealing with multiple processes in an application is new for many JavaScript developers. We’ll go over what exactly a process is and what the primary responsibilities of the main and renderer processes are. The main process is primarily responsible for creating native UI elements and managing the application lifecycle, while the renderer process runs the HTML based UI. Accordingly, different APIs are available in each process. 

Understand Electron’s main and renderer process architecture

In Electron, we often need to coordinate actions between multiple processes. For example, if a user clicks a button in a renderer process that makes a new `browserWindow` open, we need to be able to send a message to the main process that triggers this action. We’ll look at how to do just that using the `ipcRenderer` and `ipcMain` modules.

Communicate between Electron processes using IPC

`remote` allows you to seamlessly interact with main process modules as if they were in the renderer process. It’s a super useful abstraction over IPC. We’ll learn how to use it and how to avoid some potential gotchas it has. 

[Devtron](https://electron.atom.io/devtron/) is a devtools extension that the Electron team has made. We’ll be using it to view all of the IPC that happens in our application. In this lesson we’ll learn how to include and use it in our code. 

Communicate between Electron processes using the remote module

Every Electron application needs a custom icon. Mac needs an `icns` file and Windows needs an `ico` file. We'll learn how to use a npm module, `electron-icon-maker`, that takes a 1024x1024 PNG and then outputs all the files we need. 

Create an icon for your Electron app

We’ve been running our app in a development environment using the Electron executable. Now let’s learn how to package our app into a `.app` or `.exe` file so that we can distribute it to other users. Electron doesn't provide this functionality out of the box, so we'll use a popular and easy-to-use npm package called [electron-builder](https://github.com/electron-userland/electron-builder) to handle the details. electron-builder will automatically grab our `.ico` or `.icns` file and use that as our app's icon. 

Package your Electron application into a executable file with electron-builder

Code signing ensures that your app was created and distributed by you or your company and has not been modified since it was built. It is done via a special code signing certificate issued by a trusted authority. While you can distribute your Electron app without signing it; code signing is a security best practice and is a prerequisite to implementing auto-updates in your app. We’ll walkthrough how to integrate code signing into your electron-builder build process, what happens when you don't sign your application, and how to verify it's been signed correctly. 

This lesson assumes that you have already purchased code signing certificates from Apple and one of Microsoft's trusted vendors and have exported the certificate as a `p12` or `pfx` file. 

Code sign your Electron application with electron-builder

Once users are using your app, you need a way to ship new features and fixes to them. In this lesson, we’ll learn how to implement auto-updates in your app, which allows you to distribute updates to your application seamlessly. We'll go over how to integrate with Electron's `autoUpdater` module to check for an update and display a prompt to update once it's been downloaded. For our server side implementation we'll just use a plain file server to keep things simple. 


Ship updates to your Electron app with `autoUpdater` (Mac)

In this lesson, we'll go over a few differences in implementing auto-updates on Windows like handling `Squirrel.Windows` startup events and configuring `electron-builder` to build for a `Squirrel.Windows` target.

Ship updates to your Electron app with `autoUpdater` (Windows)

In this lesson, we show how to specify a model for an Ember Route so its data can be displayed. 

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