Weeknotes 2022/7 - My First Published Electron App

Last week was pretty productive as I got to launch the first public version of the new Slipmat Soundboard app I’ve been building with Electron for the past couple of weeks. The app is open source and, like all Slipmat products, geared towards a very specific use case of performing DJs and artists.

Working With Electron

Working with Electron has felt at the same time very liberating as you don’t have to worry about browser support but also dirty as you can (and probably should!) ignore generic Web best pratices like mobile-first layouts as native apps are not expected to work like Web apps.

I wrote about my initial Electron experiences and learnings in detail in a TIL.

Headless UI Combobox (Autocomplete)

I’ve been struggling to find a working combobox component ever since the early v3 alphas in early 2020. I’ve patched some exixting ones, written a couple bad ones myself, and attached myself as a follower to countless GitHub tickets tracking progress on various UI libraries. In short, comboboxes are hard.

Combobox component has been near the top of the the community wish list ever since Tailwind UI launched in February 2020. And last week we finally got the new Headless UI Combobox component. Haven’t had a chance to test this out yet but I haven’t been this overly excited about this small thing in a long time.