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Electron vs PhantomJS: What are the differences?
<Write Introduction here>
1. **Platform**: Electron is a framework for building cross-platform desktop applications using web technologies, while PhantomJS is a headless browser scriptable with JavaScript.
2. **Rendering Engine**: Electron uses the Chromium rendering engine for its applications, which allows for modern web features and compatibility, whereas PhantomJS uses WebKit for its headless browsing capabilities.
3. **Usage**: Electron is commonly used for creating desktop applications, whereas PhantomJS is often used for automated testing, web scraping, and other headless browsing tasks.
4. **Community Support**: Electron has a larger and more active community compared to PhantomJS, providing better support, updates, and resources for developers.
5. **Development Environment**: Electron provides a full development environment with tools like Electron Forge, while PhantomJS is more focused on its headless browsing functionality without extensive development support.
6. **Future Development**: Electron is actively maintained and continues to evolve, while PhantomJS development has been halted, with the project being deprecated in favor of other alternatives like Headless Chrome.
In Summary, Electron is a framework for building cross-platform desktop applications using web technologies, while PhantomJS is a headless browser scriptable with JavaScript, each with distinct purposes and features for developers to consider.
Advice on Electron and PhantomJS
Ankur Loriya
Software Engineer · | 2 upvotes · 72.6K views
I am using Node 12 for server scripting and have a function to generate PDF and send it to a browser. Currently, we are using PhantomJS to generate a PDF. Some web post shows that we can achieve PDF generation using Puppeteer. I was a bit confused. Should we move to puppeteerJS? Which one is better with NodeJS for generating PDF?
Replies (2)
Stoyan Kyosev
You better go with puppeteer. It is basically chrome automation tool, written in nodejs. So what you get is PDF, generated by chrome itself. I guess there is hardly better PDF generation tool for the web. Phantomjs is already more or less outdated as technology. It uses some old webkit port that's quite behind in terms of standards and features. It can be replaced with puppeteer for every single task.
Bhaawna Manoranjan
I suggest puppeteer to go for. It is simple and easy to set up. Only limitaiton is it can be used only for chrome browser and currently they are looking into expanding into FF. The next thing is Playwright which is just a scale up of Puppeteer. It supports cross browsers.
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Learn MorePros of Electron
Pros of PhantomJS
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
Pros of PhantomJS
- Scriptable web browser13
- Depends on QT3
- No ECMAScript 62
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Cons of Electron
Cons of PhantomJS
Cons of Electron
- Uses a lot of memory19
- 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
Cons of PhantomJS
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- No public GitHub repository available -
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.
What is PhantomJS?
PhantomJS is a headless WebKit scriptable with JavaScript. It is used by hundreds of developers and dozens of organizations for web-related development workflow.
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What companies use Electron?
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What companies use Electron?
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What are some alternatives to Electron and PhantomJS?
Photon
The fastest way to build beautiful Electron apps using simple HTML and CSS. Underneath it all is Electron. Originally built for GitHub's Atom text editor, Electron is the easiest way to build cross-platform desktop applications.
React Native Desktop
Build OS X desktop apps using React Native.
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.
React
Lots of people use React as the V in MVC. Since React makes no assumptions about the rest of your technology stack, it's easy to try it out on a small feature in an existing project.
JavaScript
JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.