Chapter 11. Using transpilers and frameworks
This chapter covers
- Setting up electron-compile to transpile CoffeeScript, TypeScript, and upcoming JavaScript features (using Babel) without a build step in an Electron application.
- Using electron-compile to transpile Less, Sass, and Stylus to CSS and Jade to HTML.
- Building a simple Electron application using React, Sass, and Jade.
- Setting up live reload, which reloads the browser window whenever the code in the renderer process has been changed.
In the chapters leading up to this one, we’ve been writing all of our UIs using vanilla JavaScript and CSS. This was intentional—this is a book on Electron, after all. It’s not a book on client-side frameworks. That said, it’s impossible to ignore that modern web developers use a wide variety of languages, frameworks, and tools to build the increasingly complex UIs that users have come to expect from the web.