Electron vs Xamarin: What are the differences?
Developers describe Electron as "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. On the other hand, Xamarin is detailed as "Create iOS, Android and Mac apps in C#". 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.
Electron belongs to "Cross-Platform Desktop Development" category of the tech stack, while Xamarin can be primarily classified under "Cross-Platform Mobile Development".
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, Xamarin provides the following key features:
- Cross-platform development- Thinking about supporting iOS, Android, Mac and Windows? Xamarin allows you to write it all in C#.
- Reuse existing code- Use your favorite .NET libraries in Xamarin apps. Easily use third-party native libraries and frameworks.
- Discover as you type- Explore APIs as you type with code autocompletion.
"Easy to make rich cross platform desktop applications" is the top reason why over 50 developers like Electron, while over 111 developers mention "Power of c# on mobile devices" as the leading cause for choosing Xamarin.
Electron is an open source tool with 74.4K GitHub stars and 9.72K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Electron's open source repository on GitHub.
Slack, WebbyLab, and triGo GmbH are some of the popular companies that use Electron, whereas Xamarin is used by Rdio, Olo, and Rumble. Electron has a broader approval, being mentioned in 213 company stacks & 366 developers stacks; compared to Xamarin, which is listed in 74 company stacks and 65 developer stacks.
What is Electron?
What is Xamarin?
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What are the cons of using Electron?
What are the cons of using Xamarin?
What tools integrate with Electron?
What tools integrate with Xamarin?
XamarinI'm working in Huge company and I'm in charge to choose the cross-platform environment to develop Mobile application for all our services. I choose Xamarin but because the error i get everytime in Visual Studio, I want to leave it and recommand another solution. In fact that's why I'm here.
Weird, Install VS2017 with Xamarin on a new PC Create a new app GOT ERRORS.....!!!!!
Thank you for considering this
ElectronOur application began as an HTML5 browser game, however we decided to leverage certain native parts of desktop applications by wrapping our client code into Electron. This also allowed us to not have to worry about compatibility across all the various browsers.
XamarinXamarin enables us to develop for 3 platforms (iOS, Android and Windows Phone) with one core codebase coded in C#. Xamarin has allowed us to release an app on all three platforms and develop them simultaneously - not bad for a team of 2!
ElectronOur Web Applications are served on our Desktops by Electron. This allows us to have native apps running on our Workstations without having too many Browser Tabs open at the same time.
XamarinSelf taught : acquired knowledge or skill on one's own initiative. Platform: OSX 10.8 or later. Mac computer user.
ElectronElectron is the current preferred method to convert games made in the Game Pencil Editor for desktop support.
ElectronImplement a web-service using your favorite tools but sell a desktop application for oblivious windows users.
XamarinBuild & ship OS X & iOS apps from Visual Studio on Windows. Requires paid team license.
ElectronUsed Electron to package single page web application as a desktop application.
XamarinMobile app development with PCL and Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android.
XamarinCross platform, white labelled native mobile apps