Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Electron VS Backbone.js

Compare Electron VS Backbone.js and see what are their differences

Electron logo Electron

Build cross platform desktop apps with web technologies

Backbone.js logo Backbone.js

Give your JS App some Backbone with Models, Views, Collections, and Events
  • Electron Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-02-01
  • Backbone.js Landing page
    Landing page //
    2018-09-30

Electron features and specs

  • Cross-Platform Compatibility
    Electron allows developers to create applications that run on Windows, macOS, and Linux using a single codebase, making it easier to reach a broader audience.
  • Web Technologies
    Developers can utilize HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (including popular frameworks like React, Angular, and Vue) to build Electron apps, enabling a more accessible development process for web developers.
  • Rich Ecosystem
    Electron benefits from the vast ecosystem of Node.js, granting access to a multitude of packages and modules, and simplifying the inclusion of various functionalities in applications.
  • Auto-Update Mechanism
    Electron has built-in support for auto-updating applications, which saves developers time and effort in managing updates and improves the user experience by keeping the application up-to-date seamlessly.
  • Active Community
    An active community and extensive documentation provide a wealth of resources for developers, from tutorials to plugins, making it easier to find support and improve productivity.

Possible disadvantages of Electron

  • Large File Size
    Because Electron packages both the application code and a version of Chromium, applications tend to be significantly larger in file size compared to native counterparts.
  • High Memory Consumption
    Electron apps can consume more memory because each window runs its instance of Chromium, which can lead to inefficient resource usage, especially on systems with limited memory.
  • Performance
    Due to its reliance on web technologies and Chromium, Electron applications may not perform as well as optimally coded native apps, particularly in resource-intensive scenarios.
  • Security Concerns
    Electron's use of web technologies and features like Node.js integration increases the attack surface, requiring careful handling of security practices to prevent vulnerabilities such as injection attacks.
  • Complexity in Debugging
    Debugging Electron applications can be more complex due to the blend of backend (Node.js) and frontend (browser-like) code, requiring developers to be proficient in multiple debugging tools and techniques.

Backbone.js features and specs

  • Lightweight
    Backbone.js is minimal and lightweight, which means it has a small footprint and adds very little overhead to your project.
  • Flexibility
    Backbone.js provides a flexible structure to developers by allowing them to build their own MVC or MVP architectures using models, views, collections, and routers.
  • Ease of Integration
    Backbone.js can be easily integrated with other libraries and frameworks, such as jQuery or underscore.js, enhancing its capabilities without much difficulty.
  • Large Community
    Backbone.js has been around for a long time, resulting in a large community and a plethora of plugins and extensions that can be leveraged.
  • Detailed Documentation
    The official site offers comprehensive documentation which includes tutorials, examples, and a detailed API reference, aiding developers to understand and utilize the library efficiently.

Possible disadvantages of Backbone.js

  • Steeper Learning Curve
    New developers might find Backbone.js difficult to learn due to its non-opinionated nature and lack of enforced structure.
  • Sparse In-Built Features
    Backbone.js provides only the basic building blocks, requiring developers to write more boilerplate code or rely on external libraries for additional functionalities.
  • Outdated
    As newer frameworks and libraries (like React, Vue, and Angular) have emerged with more robust features and better performance, Backbone.js has somewhat fallen out of favor in modern development practices.
  • Event Binding Complexity
    Managing event bindings in Backbone.js can become complex and sometimes messy in large applications, which can lead to difficult maintenance and debugging.
  • Limited Two-Way Data Binding
    Backbone.js does not provide two-way data binding out-of-the-box, unlike other frameworks such as Angular, necessitating additional code to sync views and models.

Electron videos

💻 Why You Should Build Desktop Software With Electron

More videos:

  • Review - What is Electron: The Hard Parts Made Easy
  • Review - Electron Matrix Review Video

Backbone.js videos

Introduction to Backbone.js

More videos:

  • Review - Introduction to Backbone.js
  • Review - Backbone.js Code Review w Backbone.js Mentor Jonathon

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Electron and Backbone.js)
Development Tools
100 100%
0% 0
JavaScript Framework
0 0%
100% 100
Rapid Application Development
Javascript UI Libraries
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Electron and Backbone.js

Electron Reviews

Electron.js Alternatives For Cross-Platform Development
All of this changed when Electron.js came into the picture. The framework allowed developers to create a unique cross-platform desktop application without any hurdles. However, it uses up quite a bit of resource making it harder for developers to create lightweight applications. With this blog, we will look into suitable alternatives for Electron.js.
Source: www.atatus.com
12 Best Frameworks and Toolkits to Build Desktop Applications
If you are looking for an alternative to the Electronjs desktop application development framework, Neutralinojs is a viable option. A few applications may become bulky with Electron, but Neutralinojs can help avoid such problems.
Source: geekflare.com
10 Best Tools to Develop Cross-Platform Desktop Apps 
Electron.js is compatible with a variety of frameworks, libraries, access to hardware-level APIs and chromium engine, and Node.js support. Electron Fiddle feature is great for experimentation as it allows developers to play around with concepts and templates. Simplification is at the center of Electron because developers don’t have to spend unnecessary time on the packaging,...
Electron Alternatives﹣5 Best JavaScript Frameworks for Desktop Apps
If you’re a JavaScript developer, you’re going to need to learn a few relatively simple things on how Electron works and it’s API. You will most probably be able to set up your first Electron desktop application in just a few days.
Source: brainhub.eu
Frameworks & Tools to Develop Cross-Platform Desktop Apps – Best of
Enyo is an open-source JavaScript framework, like Electron, that allows developers to create native-quality apps for desktop, mobile, and TV. Enyo can run across all the relatively modern and standard web-based environments. It’s battle-tested and comes with a beautiful cross-platform UI toolkit for creating rich user interfaces.

Backbone.js Reviews

20 Next.js Alternatives Worth Considering
A veteran on the scene, Backbone.js is all about giving structure to your JavaScript-heavy applications. It’s standing the test of time, enabling you to keep your data logic and display logic neatly side by side, all while being lightweight.
9 Best JavaScript Frameworks to Use in 2023
Backbone.js is based on the Model View Controller (MVC) design pattern. The library supports seven components: Models, Views, Collections, Routers, Events, Sync, and Options. Backbone.js also provides an asynchronous communication layer that allows the application to communicate with a backend service.
Source: ninetailed.io
JavaScript: What Are The Most Used Frameworks For This Language?
Backbone.JS is a lightweight JavaScript library that provides a framework for developing structured and scalable web applications. It offers a set of tools for building client-side applications that interact with RESTful APIs. Backbone.JS is well-suited for developing single-page applications (SPAs) where most of the user interface is rendered in the browser, rather than...
Source: www.bocasay.com
20 Best JavaScript Frameworks For 2023
Backbone.js is a JavaScript-based framework that connects to an API via a RESTful JSON interface. Backbone.js is known for being small and light because it only requires jQuery and one JavaScript library, Underscore.js, to use the entire library.
Top JavaScript Frameworks For Mobile App Development
Backbone JS is a JavaScript framework based on the MVP app design. As the name suggests, it acts as a strong backbone to your project. It is lightweight in nature and hence, is considered ideal for developing single-page applications. It offers a simplistic frontend and makes the best use of JavaScript functions.
Source: medium.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Backbone.js might be a bit more popular than Electron. We know about 17 links to it since March 2021 and only 14 links to Electron. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Electron mentions (14)

  • Design Systems with Web Components
    So we talked a lot about the Atomic Design Principle, but you could just use that in any system and start creating. You could have Angular components, React Components, and Vue Components. But if you notice these don't easily work Everwhere. So the solution is to use Web Components because the modern browser can already understand these, and any Front-End framework can then utilize these components. You can use... - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Building Apps with Tauri and Elixir
    For the longest time, building desktop apps was a daunting task to web developers. That is, until technologies like Electron made creating these apps more approachable to a wider audience. Today, we’ve got a wide array of native applications built with solutions like Electron, Tauri, Capacitor, and many more. While these are great solutions, sometimes configuration can be tricky and the applications we create can... - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • SvelteKit + Electron: Create your desktop web app
    I make a new Adapter for SvelteKit apps that prerenders your entire site as a collection of static files for use with Electron. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Electron: Build Desktop Applications Using Plain Javascript
    Electron is a cross-platform shell — a user interface for accessing operating system services both via command line (CLI) and graphical user interface (GUI). - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Circuit To Turn On Desktop PC
    Electron (https://electronjs.org/) is a framework for developing cross-platform desktop applications using JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. This is the technology behind many popular apps like Slack, Discord and Visual Studio Code. Join for discussions around Electron! Source: over 2 years ago
View more

Backbone.js mentions (17)

  • JavaScript Views, the Hard Way – A Pattern for Writing UI
    Https://backbonejs.org/#View There is also a github repo that has examples of MVC patterns adapted to the web platform. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 month ago
  • JavaScript evolution: From Lodash and Underscore to vanilla
    Underscore was created by Jeremy Ashkenas (the creator of Backbone.js) in 2009 to provide a set of utility functions that JavaScript lacked at the time. It was also created to work with Backbone.js, but it slowly became a favorite among developers who needed utility functions that they could just call and get stuff done with without having to worry about the inner implementations and browser compatibility. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • React is 10 years old
    Got it thanks for the context. I've read the web app and it seems to me it is just https://backbonejs.org/ re-written in Typescript and allows JSX. I'm very certain Typescript and JSX will have improved the DX for Backbone like apps, but it doesn't address all of the other issues that teams had with Backbone. e.g. Cyclical event propagation, state stored in the DOM (i.e. Appendchild is error prone in large code... - Source: Hacker News / almost 2 years ago
  • Just Simply – Stop saying how simple things are in our docs
    Even further nowadays, docs are created using Docusaurus. I don't have problem with it but documentation should be good (eye) friendly than easy to write. Why not be creative while writing docs such as - Backbone.js - https://backbonejs.org Or https://backbonejs.org/docs/backbone.html as code annotation. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 years ago
  • The Emperor's New Library
    What we see, a decade ago, are that many of the "popular" libraries, frameworks, and methods, not surprisingly, have gone by the wayside, a lot that have remained in current code as difficult-to-removemodernize legacy cruft (Bower, Gulp, Grunt, Backbone, Angular 1, ...), and then we have the small minority that are still here. Some that remain have had their utility lessened/questioned by platform and language... - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Electron and Backbone.js, you can also consider the following products

Flutter - Build beautiful native apps in record time 🚀

AngularJS - AngularJS lets you extend HTML vocabulary for your application. The resulting environment is extraordinarily expressive, readable, and quick to develop.

Qt - Powerful, flexible and easy to use, Qt will help you not only meet your tight deadline, but also reduce the maintainable code by an astonishing percentage.

ExpressJS - Sinatra inspired web development framework for node.js -- insanely fast, flexible, and simple

React Native - A framework for building native apps with React

ember.js - A JavaScript framework for creating ambitious web apps