I have a big existing website (hundreds of dynamic pages) built in Coldfusion - we don't CF for any of the display stuff, that's just css and html.
We're about to implement a new front end design and it has been suggested that we use the Foundation 5 framework for the html and css - I don't have any experience with using frameworks and can't get my head around what the Foundation 5 framework is and if it'll get in the way of coldfusion (or vice versa)
Does anyone have any information that will help me gain an understanding as to what the framework actually does please /how it'd integrate with CF?
Thanks ever so much.
Nick
Foundation (or bootstrap) will be completely independent of the ColdFusion backend. They're simply separate technologies.
Foundation is a CSS framework - it doesn't have any serverside components (unless you count things like grunt + various ways of custom building the result).
Related
I am a newbie web developer tasked with creating a website for a client in the art industry. I've decided to roll with Mezzanine + Cartridge for the project as it seems like an accessible way to get started. I now have the server up and running with no issues, but obviously can't use the default Mezzanine theme for such a project.
I'm finding that theres a highly limited amount of themes available online for Mezzanine, and that there are a lot more Bootstrap themes available floating around. Is there a way I could use the two together? Ie the UI/front end being a Bootstrap theme while still maintaining the functionality of Mezz/Cartridge?
If so, how would I go about doing this? Not expecting a step by step guide, but any advice/guidance would be highly appreciated. Like I said, I'm incredibly new to this (first website ever!) so if I'm misunderstanding something, please let me know. Thank you for your time.
You'll override the base template as the starting point for customizing the look of everything. In there you'll find the stylesheets for bootstrap used, which you can modify/replace/etc.
https://github.com/stephenmcd/mezzanine/blob/32dc38778d296f508a23b729de04a02075994df5/mezzanine/core/templates/base.html#L18-L32
I'm trying to optimize my company's application.
Tha architecture at this time is composed of different folders (inside common folder) for different sections of the app (for example Managing Bills, Managing Canteen, Managing Events etc etc).
Every js and css are included in the first page of the application (login.html) because I'm using the simple page template of jQuery Mobile.
Now I'm considering to add some other components to make the app easier to mantain and maybe speed it a bit.
What do you think about:
RequireJS to divide each section in a module so i can load only the javascript of a particular module at run-time instead of loading within login.html
Inline #imports for CSS files to produce single composite CSS
uglify.js to Minimize file sizes
Handlebars.js to realize fragments of html reusable
Do you think is a good way of work for an application that will become greater by adding new sections?
Do you think of other tools?
Thank you
This is a very broad question. I think you're on the right track... I'll list some libraries that could be worth trying:
Require.js - Will give you the ability to have 'modules' and dynamically determine and load dependancies. Alternatively some people prefer patterns such as the Revealing Module Pattern, jQuery Plugin Style or Common JS style modules. For what it's worth I recommend Require.js.
Bower is a package manager, you can use it to bower install [package]. They have a lot of packages here and you can also link it to your own repo. This could be helpful for managing dependancies.
Uglify.js and Google Closure Compiler are both good for minifying your code. Remember that some minification configurations such as advance mode could break your code. Run tests against the minified version of your source code.
QUnit is good for doing JavaScript unit tests. There are many other alternatives like Jasmine, which is what the Cordova guys use.
Lodash is another (faster) implementation of underscore.js that will provide a lot of utility methods for working wit arrays, objects, functions, etc. It also includes templating support. There's a good talk by the author here.
There a MV* JavaScript frameworks that could help more than jQuery (DOM+AJAX+Animations) or jQuery Mobile (Mostly UI) such as: Dojo, AngularJS, Backbone and Ember.js.
For UI you may want to checkout Adobe's topcoat repository and website. There's also Twitter Bootstrap and Foundation which allow you do to responsive design out of the box. If you're set on jQuery Mobile I personally like this Flat theme.
JSDoc and YUIDoc are good alternatives for documenting your JavaScript code.
I have no idea how many of those tools will interact inside Worklight Applications. It should be fine, since Worklight doesn't impose a certain set of JavaScript libraries you have to use. However, I haven't personally tried most of them inside Worklight Applications.
I just started using Ember.js recently and I love the functionality. I'm wondering which UI toolkit you might be using to tie into design side of your applications.
For Bootstrap integration with Ember, take a look at this project I started two days ago:
https://github.com/ember-addons/bootstrap-for-ember
It really fun and easy to use and lightly integrate bootstrap and ember components altogether.
Personaly, I am using Twitter's bootstrap library, which is quite low level, but pretty clean.
Twitter Bootstrap is my preffered choice when it comes to UI especially when prototyping something quickly, recently i have started to use EmberJS and have looked into this as well. So far i have found https://github.com/emberjs-addons/ember-bootstrap
I will update this as my search continues.
Hope this helps with your project!
Twitter bootstrap is a great UI frameworks no doubts but I feel it is too mainstream these days. Hence my personal preference is Metro UI CSS, it's sleek and great for developing mobile applications using HTML5
I am just starting with emberjs also. Actually I use JQMobile. But I have some issues with it. As I want have a Mobile look and feel, I will try more.
But even if have not use bootstrap with EmberJs I think it will be easier to use as it's only css.
With a UI toolkit that use JavaScript and is owns attributs(exemple : data-role="List"... with JQuery Mobile) you can have rendering issues. I think this is because that Metamorphose/Handlebars and JQuery Mobile both modify the DOM on the fly and it can be tricky to get all work right.
But I am not a EmberJs or JQ Mobile Guru :-)
Sorry for my english, it isn't my mother tongue.
Just one Question .. what is a OSS framework and do you have the links on GitUb
This maybe old but I've used this addon on over 5 projects so far with great success. The project is well maintained and flexible. The maintainer is active and takes pull requests efficiently.
http://kaliber5.github.io/ember-bootstrap/
Disclaimer: I am not officiated with this project beyond that of an end consumer.
You could have a look at Ember Paper if you like Google Material:
http://miguelcobain.github.io/ember-paper/
How can multiple developers work on the same website (CSS, JavaScript, ASP.NET).
We use SVN as source control, but the problem is more in regards of testing and general workflow.
I know we could do unit tests and we have for our API, but I don't see how we can do unit testing for our frontend?
We get a lot of problems in the frontend like:
Developer 1 changes CSS and it messes up CSS for developer 2.
Developer 1 changes JavaScript and components developer 2 made stops working.
Developer 1 removed an ID or a CSS class in C# (code behind) and CSS styling is lost or JavaScript stops working.
It's basically things of that nature.
What we do now is manually test everything in all major browsers and we spend too much time on that.
Any good suggestions on how we can improve our way of working? Keep in mind that it's a website and we are struggling with problems related to that.
This is a management issue rather than a workflow issue.
You need to be proactive at managing the situation and be tough.
You have a source control system in place, what you need to do is:-
Enforce day end (or more frequent if preferred) check ins.
Rollback work if it doesn't work. You have to be tough on this point to ensure the developers understand that you mean it.
You need to actively communicate the above to your team to make sure they understand the new work procedures.
It'd only take a few weeks for it to sink in, after that you can relax the controls.
Introduce releases/iterations/milestones; and publish them only from the repo.
Can you not possibly break the site areas up into segments and assign developer responsibilities to each, even if it means sandboxing the "base" code of the site (framework / main CSS / main JavaScript) and assigning a specific responsibility to it? You can then task developers to keep their CSS / JavaScript separate from the main files and merge them before testing and release.
We've had similar problems where I work and this approach seemed to sort it out for the most part. For each segment we built we created a new folder in each of the respective projects (DAL / BL / Presentation), based on the functionalities / modules / segments, each with their own site content (JavaScript / CSS), but still making sure that some generic styling and JavaScript being available to all developers.
An official Agile project management methodology (like Scrum) has huge benefits in an environment like this, as you get to discuss these issues on a daily basis and, if over-arching requirements for new CSS and JavaScript are identified by all developers, it can be integrated into the site's base content.
I am a novice web designer who has a history of creating websites using templates and WSIWYG programs like Dreamweaver. So I know some basic html and a little flash. But that's it - I DO NOT know CSS or CMS. Mostly I'm a graphic designer. But I'm looking to learn a new web language...
I now have a client who wants me to design a website so that in the future, they can edit the website themselves. I know this is a popular trend these days in the client community. And I know this is the main purpose of web CMS. I am looking to learn a new web language but want to make sure I learn the right one.
My question is, what language do you recommend to build this website -- making it the easiest for the client to edit in the future? What language has the best/easiest interface for a NON-DESIGNER to edit a website? Another matter of note, also, is the flexibility of design creativity on my end.
Wordpress? Droopal? Joomla? I've researched a little bit about Adobe Contribute CS5 as well and thought of this also as a viable option... perhaps?
Thoughts? Suggestions?
In depth info would be awesome! Pros/cons of popular languages, common uses for popular languages (blogs, ecommerce, etc.), links to further knowledge, references, etc.
Thanks!!
Without a doubt, you should start with Wordpress.
You may take a look at this google trends comparison: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=wordpress,drupal,joomla
I'm not saying is the best, but Wordpress is VERY popular, it is much simpler to begin with, and I think you'll get much more job offers.
Regarding languages and technologies, Wordpress is PHP powered, so your learning path should be:
- HTML
- CSS
- PHP
- JavaScript / jQuery
And for the future, you might start thinking on Javascript, Node, Angular and React since the internet ship is going that direction (even Wordpress)
My personal recommendation if you wanted to code fancy things would be Python and the Django web framework. However, that's probably a bit more advanced than you can currently handle.
All 3 of the frameworks you've listed are well respected. Which one you choose is really going to depend on what kind of site you're building. If you're building a site which focuses around a blog, by all means use Wordpress. You can add static elements relatively easily, but it shines for episodic content. If you're building a site that has more static "page" type content, either Drupal or Joomla are reasonable choices. I would probably lean a bit towards Drupal. If you tell us what kind of page you're building for your client, we can give you more tailored advice.
As an aside, "CMS" isn't really a language. The systems you're talking about are frameworks. PHP is the language that they happen to be written in.
You won't go wrong with any of the above options.
I would stay away from Adobe Contribute.
There are many good open source content systems such as wordpress, drupal, joomla, etc. They can be customized for your needs. Here are some tips if you want to write your own: learn soke script language like php, perl, python,etc. Php is very user-friendly and there are so much built in functions that make your life easier. You also need some database experience - mysql, postgre, etc. Creating your own cms is a good way to learn a concept, so good luck.
I would definitely start with learning HTML 4 (and 5) and CSS.
For a server side language there are several options. Perhaps PHP is the easiest to start with.
WordPress is a very powerful framework. Joomla is even bigger. It totally depends on the requirements. But if you want to use a framework like Joomla, Drupal, or WordPress, PHP is probably the best language to study. Personally I'd prefer ASP.NET, but that's mostly because I'm already familiar with that framework. I like PHP as well, but it always feels like ASP.NET is more mature. But that's my personal opinion!
Take a look at the features of WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, that's the best advice I can give. You've got the requirements for the website so, after a short study, you are the only one who can make a good decision.