A year ago, I wrote about some goals of the Neutralinojs project for the year 2020. Those milestones could be summarized as below.
- Completing existing feature requests that have been added by the community.
- Implementing React and Angular starter templates for
neu-cli. - Trying to use Edge browser instance instead of IE on Windows.
I am happy to say that we could release a lot of useful features for Neutralinojs during the last year.
Feature highlights are,
- React starter project for
neu-cli. - Binary file serving support was added to the Neutralinojs server.
- Making the native window more customizable by introducing properties to the
settings.jsonsuch as window icon, borderless mode, always on top mode, maximize mode, etc. - Native notifications.
- Of course, some bug fixes and enhancements.
Whereas, we had to drop several feature requests temporarily. For example, replacing IE was creating many drawbacks. Edge integration requires some additional dependencies, and also it needs some additional developer tools to be installed. The whole concept behind Neutralinojs is about portability, lightheartedness, and simplicity. Therefore, we had to drop the specific feature request temporarily.
Popularity
Last year, when I was writing the roadmap, Neutralinojs only had 1.3k stargazers on Github. Now, it simply passed 3k by also maximizing more active users on Slack. We received a lot of positive comments regarding the project from the developers who understood the idea behind Neutralinojs.
Hybrid apps are fine. But bloatware is really bad.
– A Neutralinojs user
Now, many developers are experimenting with Neutralinojs, and our web analytics data say that everyday developers are browsing the official documentation too. We found Neutralinojs in forums, articles, YouTube videos, and podcasts worldwide. Also, Google search’s auto-complete list has more entries for the “Neutralinojs ” keyword now.
Goals for 2021
The macOS version is missing some important features. We are planning to synchronize all versions carefully. Many developers pointed out that the documentation is a bit outdated. Therefore, we are planning to improve the entire documentation. All the time, we said, “Neutralinojs is not production-ready yet”. We had an idea to rewrite Neutralinojs into a single codebase. Although, that’s a lot of work at this phase of development. Therefore, We have decided to make the current snapshot of Neutralinojs production-ready by doing the required code refactoring and enhancements.
I am planning to do the following tasks within this year for the Neutralinojs project.
- Completing prioritized feature requests.
- Implementing an error-code system, doing required refactoring, and making Neutralinojs production-ready even for quite larger apps.
- Synchronizing features among all supported platforms.
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