Electron vs Material Design Lite

Overview

Electron

Stacks11.6K

Followers10.0K

Votes148

Material Design Lite

Stacks697

Followers394

Votes62

GitHub Stars32.2K

Forks5.0K

Electron vs Material Design Lite: What are the differences?

What is Electron? Build cross platform desktop apps with web technologies. Formerly known as Atom Shell, made by GitHub. 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.

What is Material Design Lite? Material Design Lite Components in HTML/CSS/JS. Material Design Lite (MDL) lets you add a Material Design look and feel to your static content websites. It doesn't rely on any JavaScript frameworks or libraries. Optimized for cross-device use, gracefully degrades in older browsers, and offers an experience that is accessible from the get-go.

Electron can be classified as a tool in the "Cross-Platform Desktop Development" category, while Material Design Lite is grouped under "Front-End Frameworks".

Some of the features offered by Electron are:

Use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with Chromium and Node.js to build your app.
Electron is open source
maintained by GitHub and an active community.

On the other hand, Material Design Lite provides the following key features:

Blog Template
Dashboard Template
Text Heavy Webpage Template

"Easy to make rich cross platform desktop applications" is the top reason why over 50 developers like Electron, while over 23 developers mention "Material Design straight from the original creators" as the leading cause for choosing Material Design Lite.

Electron and Material Design Lite are both open source tools. It seems that Electron with 74.4K GitHub stars and 9.72K forks on GitHub has more adoption than Material Design Lite with 31.3K GitHub stars and 5.32K GitHub forks.

According to the StackShare community, Electron has a broader approval, being mentioned in 213 company stacks & 366 developers stacks; compared to Material Design Lite, which is listed in 9 company stacks and 26 developer stacks.

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Advice on Electron, Material Design Lite

Semih

Software Engineering Manager

Oct 1, 2020

Needs adviceon

JavaScript

HTML5

.NET

Hi,

We are planning to develop a brand new UX for an already existing desktop software. The previous version is developed on C#.NET with Winforms & WPF. Our plan is to use JavaScript/HTML5 based frontend technologies for the new software. For some components, we are highly dependent on .NET/ .NET Core because the JS-based versions are not mature enough.

What would you choose for a desktop-based Engineering Software that supports multi-OS and has rich UI capabilities considering the .NET dependencies?

Thanks in advance,

Semih

57.9k views57.9k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Electron	Material Design Lite
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.	Material Design Lite (MDL) lets you add a Material Design look and feel to your static content websites. It doesn't rely on any JavaScript frameworks or libraries. Optimized for cross-device use, gracefully degrades in older browsers, and offers an experience that is accessible from the get-go.
Use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with Chromium and Node.js to build your app.;Electron is open source; maintained by GitHub and an active community.;Electron apps build and run on Mac, Windows, and Linux.;Automatic updates;Crash reporting;Windows installers;Debugging & profiling;Native menus & notifications	Blog template;Dashboard template;Text heavy webpage template; Stand alone article template;
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 32.2K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 5.0K
Stacks 11.6K	Stacks 697
Followers 10.0K	Followers 394
Votes 148	Votes 62
Pros & Cons
Pros 69 Easy to make rich cross platform desktop applications 53 Open source 14 Great looking apps such as Slack and Visual Studio Code 8 Because it's cross platform 4 Use Node.js in the Main Process Cons 19 Uses a lot of memory 8 User experience never as good as a native app 4 No proper documentation 4 Does not native 1 Each app needs to install a new chromium + nodejs	Pros 23 Material Design straight from the original creators 11 Based on bem philosophy 9 Nice animations 7 SCSS 5 Simple Material Design

What are some alternatives to Electron, Material Design Lite?

Bootstrap

Bootstrap is the most popular HTML, CSS, and JS framework for developing responsive, mobile first projects on the web.

Foundation

Foundation is the most advanced responsive front-end framework in the world. You can quickly prototype and build sites or apps that work on any kind of device with Foundation, which includes layout constructs (like a fully responsive grid), elements and best practices.

Semantic UI

Semantic empowers designers and developers by creating a shared vocabulary for UI.

Materialize

A CSS Framework based on material design.

Material Design for Angular

Material Design is a specification for a unified system of visual, motion, and interaction design that adapts across different devices. Our goal is to deliver a lean, lightweight set of AngularJS-native UI elements that implement the material design system for use in Angular SPAs.

Material-UI

Material UI is a library of React UI components that implements Google's Material Design.

Blazor

Blazor is a .NET web framework that runs in any browser. You author Blazor apps using C#/Razor and HTML.

Quasar Framework

Build responsive Single Page Apps, SSR Apps, PWAs, Hybrid Mobile Apps and Electron Apps, all using the same codebase!, powered with Vue.

Nuxt.js

Nuxt.js presets all the configuration needed to make your development of a Vue.js application enjoyable. You can use Nuxt.js for SSR, SPA, Static Generated, PWA and more.

UIkIt

UIkit gives you a comprehensive collection of HTML, CSS, and JS components which is simple to use, easy to customize and extendable.

Related Comparisons

Some of the features offered by Electron are:

Use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with Chromium and Node.js to build your app.
Electron is open source
maintained by GitHub and an active community.

On the other hand, Material Design Lite provides the following key features:

Blog Template
Dashboard Template
Text Heavy Webpage Template

Electron vs Material Design Lite