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Crosswalk vs Electron: What are the differences?
# Introduction
This Markdown code provides a comparison between Crosswalk and Electron.
1. **Implementation Language**: Crosswalk is built with C++ and includes a customized version of the Chromium browser, while Electron is built using Node.js and Chromium. This difference in implementation languages can impact performance, development experience, and maintenance requirements for developers.
2. **Size and Footprint**: Crosswalk tends to have a larger download size and memory footprint compared to Electron due to its inclusion of a full browser engine. This can affect the user experience, especially on devices with limited resources.
3. **Supported Platforms**: Crosswalk primarily targets Android and iOS platforms, offering a web runtime that can be embedded in mobile applications. On the other hand, Electron supports a wider range of platforms, including Windows, macOS, and Linux, making it more versatile for desktop applications.
4. **Packaging and Distribution**: Electron provides tools like Electron Packager and asar to package and distribute applications, streamlining the deployment process for developers. Crosswalk, on the other hand, may require additional configurations and steps for packaging applications for different platforms.
5. **API Access**: Electron offers access to Node.js APIs for file system operations, networking, and other system-level interactions, giving developers more flexibility and power in building desktop applications. Crosswalk, while suitable for web-based mobile applications, may not provide the same level of access to native APIs on different platforms.
6. **Community and Ecosystem**: Electron boasts a larger community and ecosystem of plugins, libraries, and documentation compared to Crosswalk, which can be beneficial for developers seeking support, resources, and additional functionalities for their projects.
In Summary, Markdown code provides a comparison between Crosswalk and Electron, focusing on implementation language, size, supported platforms, packaging, API access, and community support.
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Learn MorePros of Crosswalk
Pros of Electron
Pros of Crosswalk
- Essential for Android hybrid apps2
- Improved performance1
- Hybrid desktop apps1
- New Modern Cordova1
- Pretty decent solution to Android WebView issues1
Pros of Electron
- Easy to make rich cross platform desktop applications69
- Open source53
- Great looking apps such as Slack and Visual Studio Code14
- Because it's cross platform8
- Use Node.js in the Main Process4
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Cons of Crosswalk
Cons of Electron
Cons of Crosswalk
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Cons of Electron
- Uses a lot of memory18
- User experience never as good as a native app8
- No proper documentation4
- Does not native4
- Each app needs to install a new chromium + nodejs1
- Wrong reference for dom inspection1
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- No public GitHub repository available -
What is Crosswalk?
Crosswalk is a web runtime for ambitious HTML5 applications. All the features of a modern browser, deep device integration and an API for adding native extensions
What is Electron?
With Electron, creating a desktop application for your company or idea is easy. Initially developed for GitHub's Atom editor, Electron has since been used to create applications by companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Slack, and Docker. The Electron framework lets you write cross-platform desktop applications using JavaScript, HTML and CSS. It is based on io.js and Chromium and is used in the Atom editor.
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What companies use Crosswalk?
What companies use Electron?
What companies use Crosswalk?
What companies use Electron?
See which teams inside your own company are using Crosswalk or Electron.
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What tools integrate with Crosswalk?
What tools integrate with Electron?
What tools integrate with Crosswalk?
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Blog Posts
What are some alternatives to Crosswalk and Electron?
React Native
React Native enables you to build world-class application experiences on native platforms using a consistent developer experience based on JavaScript and React. The focus of React Native is on developer efficiency across all the platforms you care about - learn once, write anywhere. Facebook uses React Native in multiple production apps and will continue investing in React Native.
Flutter
Flutter is a mobile app SDK to help developers and designers build modern mobile apps for iOS and Android.
Ionic
Free and open source, Ionic offers a library of mobile and desktop-optimized HTML, CSS and JS components for building highly interactive apps. Use with Angular, React, Vue, or plain JavaScript.
Xamarin
Xamarin’s Mono-based products enable .NET developers to use their existing code, libraries and tools (including Visual Studio*), as well as skills in .NET and the C# programming language, to create mobile applications for the industry’s most widely-used mobile devices, including Android-based smartphones and tablets, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.
Apache Cordova
Apache Cordova is a set of device APIs that allow a mobile app developer to access native device function such as the camera or accelerometer from JavaScript. Combined with a UI framework such as jQuery Mobile or Dojo Mobile or Sencha Touch, this allows a smartphone app to be developed with just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.