Chapter 1, Meet NW.js, provides a presentation of the NW.js technology followed by a brief digression on how NW.js works under the hood, an analysis of the strengths of the library, and eventually a step-by-step tutorial on building a first, simple "Hello World" application.

Chapter 2, NW.js Native UI APIs, takes you through a thorough description of Native UI APIs with examples on how to interact with OS windows, work with menus, run shell commands, and much, much more.

Chapter 3, Leveraging the Power of Node.js, gives an introduction of how NW.js development differs from standard server/client programming and a few interesting hints on how to get the maximum out of Node.js within NW.js applications.

Chapter 4, Data Persistence Solutions and Other Browser Web APIs, explains more about data handling and takes advantage of Browser Web APIs to build beautiful, usable, and native-like desktop applications.

Chapter 5, Let's Put It All Together, builds a fully working application based on many of the concepts you've learned in the previous chapters.

Chapter 6, Packaging Your Application for Distribution, gives a step-by-step tutorial on the packaging process of NW.js applications on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

Chapter 7, Automated Packaging Tools, takes advantage of third-party tools to simplify the packaging process of NW.js applications.

Chapter 8, Let's Debug Your Application, teaches you different ways to debug your application and a few common issues of NW.js.

Chapter 9, Taking Your Application to the Next Level, involves a collection of ideas and resources to get the best out of what you've learned in this book.

In order to fully understand the concepts explained in the book, a decent knowledge of the following subjects is mandatory:

It's not mandatory, but it might be helpful to have previous experience in the use of JavaScript task runners such as Gulp and Grunt.

The book is targeted at experienced Node.js developers with a basic understanding of frontend web development.

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "Packages for Mac and Windows are zipped, while those for Linux are in the tar.gz format."

A block of code is set as follows:

{
  "name": "nw-hello-world",
  "main": "index.html",
  "dependencies": {
    "markdown": "0.5.x"
  }
}

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

var markdown = require("markdown").markdown,
    div = document.createElement("div"),
    content = "#Hello World!\n" +
    "We are using **io.js** " + 
    "version *" + process.version + "*";

div.innerHTML = markdown.toHTML(content);
document.body.appendChild(div);

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

$ cd nwjs
$ ./nw

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: " Open it, and from the top menu, navigate to Tools | Build System | New Build System."

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To send us general feedback, simply e-mail <[email protected]>, and mention the book's title in the subject of your message.

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