Chapter 3. Building a notes application
This chapter covers
- Introducing the application we’ll build over the next few chapters
- Configuring our CSS stylesheet to look more like a native application
- Reviewing the relationship between the main and renderer processes in Electron
- Implementing the basic functionality for our main and renderer processes
- Accessing the Chrome Developer Tools in the renderer process in Electron
Our bookmark manager was a fine place to start, but it only scratches the surface of what we can do with Electron. In this chapter, we dig a little bit deeper and lay the foundation for an application with stronger ties to the user’s operating system. Over the course of the next few chapters, we’ll implement features that trigger the operating system’s GUIs, read from and write to the filesystem, and access the clipboard.
We are building a simple note editor that allows us to create new or open existing Markdown files, convert them to HTML, and save the HTML to the filesystem and clipboard. Let’s call the application Fire Sale as an only slightly clever play on price markdowns—because it’s a Markdown editor after all. At the end of the chapter, we’ll discuss the techniques and tools available for debugging our Electron applications when things go awry.