Node-webkit is based on Chromium and Node.js. You can write native apps in HTML and Javascript with node-webkit. It also lets you to call Node.js modules directly from DOM and enables a new way of writing native applications with all Web technologies. This makes it possible to deploy your web application natively on Windows, OSX or Linux.

make it native

First check out the GitHub project page of Node-Webkit. There is a well written documentation some demos and tutorials. Every app package should contain a manifest file named package.json inside the project folder. This file contains informations how to open the app and control how the browser behaves. You can get all the information here.

Follow this “Hello World” example for a first test. It also uncovers how to customize the menu bar.

Make sure you zip only the files not the folder that contains the files. Once you’ve setup everything correctly this is the way to make your web app native.

conclusion

Package your HTML5 App with Node-Webkit is just awesome. It brings a high-performance HTML5 environment with JavaScript JITting compiler, WebGL, Audio, hardware accelerated Canvas, camera access, etc.. Easy and fast to build and deploy.