menubar
High level way to create menubar desktop applications with electron
This module provides boilerplate for setting up a menubar application using electron. all you have to do is point it at your index.html
and menubar icon and this will handle opening/closing a window when you click/blur.
Works on Mac OS, Windows and some Linuxes (Tested on Xfce4, your mileage may vary -- patches welcome!)
Mac OS
Windows
Watch the 1HR screen recording of me coding this module: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAJAvsyaHs0
This module was written for + is used by Monu
installation
npm install menubar --save
usage
create a JS program like this:
var menubar = require('menubar')
var mb = menubar()
mb.on('ready', function ready () {
console.log('app is ready')
// your app code here
})
make sure there is also a index.html
file in dir
then use electron
or electron-packager
to build/run the app:
$ npm install electron-prebuilt -g
$ electron your-app.js
see example/
for a working example
the return value of mb
is an event emitter with these properties:
{
app: the electron require('app') instance,
window: the electron require('browser-window') instance,
tray: the electron require('tray') instance,
positioner: the electron-positioner instance,
setOption(option, value): change an option after menubar is created,
getOption(option): get an menubar option,
showWindow(): show the menubar window,
hideWindow(): hide the menubar window
}
options
you can pass an optional options object into the menubar constructor
-
dir
(defaultprocess.cwd()
) - the app source directory -
index
(defaultfile:// + opts.dir + index.html
) - the html to load for the pop up window -
icon
(defaultopts.dir + IconTemplate.png
) - the png icon to use for the menubar. A good size to start with is 20x20. To support retina, supply a 2x sized image (e.g. 40x40) with@2x
added to the end of the name, soicon.png
andicon@2x.png
and Electron will automatically use your@2x
version on retina screens. -
tooltip
(default empty) - menubar tray icon tooltip text -
tray
(default created on-the-fly) - an electronTray
instance. if providedopts.icon
will be ignored -
preloadWindow
(default false) - Create BrowserWindow instance before it is used -- increasing resource usage, but making the click on the menubar load faster. -
width
(default 400) - window width -
height
(default 400) - window height -
x
(default null) - the x position of the window -
y
(default null) - the y position of the window -
alwaysOnTop
(default false) - if true, the window will not hide on blur -
showOnAllWorkspaces
(default true) - Makes the window available on all OS X workspaces. -
windowPosition
(default trayCenter and trayBottomCenter on Windows) - Sets the window position (x and y will still override this), check positioner docs for valid values. -
showDockIcon
(default false) - Configure the visibility of the application dock icon. -
showOnRightClick
(default false) - Show the window on 'right-click' event instead of regular 'click'
events
the return value of the menubar constructor is an event emitter
-
ready
- when the app has been created and initialized -
create-window
- the line before new BrowserWindow is called -
after-create-window
- the line after all window init code is done -
show
- the line before window.show is called -
after-show
- the line after window.show is called -
hide
- the line before window.hide is called (on window blur) -
after-hide
- the line after window.hide is called -
after-close
- after the .window (BrowserWindow) property has been deleted -
focus-lost
- emitted if always-on-top option is set and the user clicks away
tips
-
Use
mb.on('after-create-window', callback)
to run things after your app has loaded. For example you could runmb.window.openDevTools()
to open the developer tools for debugging, or load a different URL withmb.window.loadUrl()
-
Use
mb.on('focus-lost')
if you would like to perform some operation when using the optionalwaysOnTop:true