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
}

options

you can pass an optional options object into the menubar constructor

• dir (default process.cwd()) - the app source directory
• index (default file:// + opts.dir + index.html) - the html to load for the pop up window
• icon (default opts.dir + 'Icon.png') - the png icon to use for the menubar
• tray (default created on-the-fly) - an electron Tray instance. if provided opts.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 screen.workArea.width - opts.width - 200) - the x position of the window
• y (default screen.workArea.y) - the y position of the window

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