872676 - [mortar] Create app-stub template

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Developer Ecosystem :: Dev Kit, defect)

Description

[Fred Wenzel [:wenzel]]

Rework the app-stub template to be UI-only. This will make this template very very simple.

Include a manifest and a reasonable project structure.

When it's done, we can add the core x-tags bundle to it, which I'll file a followup bug for.

Comment 1

[Soledad Penades [:sole] [:spenades]]

(I'm still a bit unsure as to where should I post my comments-either here or as "code review" comments in github, but since these are sort of generic and not pointing to specific lines, I think it should be fine to post them here. Please correct me if I'm wrong!)

I've been looking at the template ('simplify' branch), and as I said to James yesterday in IRC it seems like it's pretty much there already! Only some minor observations:

- PAYMENTS: do we need to worry about payments at this stage? I mean if you're a new developer you don't really want to get confused with payments stuff.

- ZEPTO: maybe we could add a little bit more of functionality with Zepto, something that "justifies" it being there. Otherwise I'd suggest removing it as well since we're using it to... add a listener and show / hide a button?
The thing is, I remember when I was starting to do things with jQuery, it was hard for me to understand why some things had to be wrapped in $() and when they were jQ-objects or plain JavaScript stuff. It is confusing.

- ONREADY: should the if(navigator.mozApps) call be inside that callback?

- PLACE HOLDER TEXT: There are some empty fields such as the document title and the description. I think we should provide some sample content. Otherwise people might not gather from the get go what can be placed there, or even think that it needs to be empty. Maybe also add a comment? We obviously need to balance how much help/info we provide versus how much noise we add that needs to be removed before using the template for a totally new app. I'd call it the 'amount of deleting required'.

- STYLING: the default template is ugly right now. That's fine in a way, but I think if you want to win users over you need to make things attractive visually. There's an empty app.css file already linked from index.html --what about adding some minor styling that provides very simple css reset rules, etc, and makes it look nice? We could also maybe include a custom font and ensure it is accessible locally*.

On the same line-what about adding a header or something? So it has some sort of visual structure*.

Not too sure about *star marked items, anyway.

Comment 2

[James Long (:jlongster)]

You're right to post comments here; we should only use bugzilla when there is a specific PR going on. Thanks for the comments, you make some good points!

About payments and zepto, we probably can drop those. We have a clearer vision about the templates, that they should focus on UI, and in light of that it makes sense. The other templates are probably going to have something, but maybe that's just x-tags. We're considering putting our future x-tags UI bundle in with app-stub, since it needs to do *something*, and I think the main point is to provide a template to get started writing UIs quickly.

We can drop payments and zepto though, and add links to them in the template docs.

The mozApps stuff is handled by an install library written by another Mozillian (I forget who), so I'm not sure about that. I don't think it needs to wait for the DOM.

We used to have a lot more comments, and I think we should put some back in about the title and a few other fields.

I'm not sure what to do about styling; that gets "personal" very fast. I think we should begin rebuilding the other templates with x-tags to get a feel for what the future x-tags UI bundle will look like. It's very likely that we will include it in the app-stub, and it will come with some basic styles.

I don't think there should be anything structural in app-stub though, at most just some basic colors and fonts (and possibly some reset css stolen from normalize.css).

All good points, I'll ping you tomorrow so that we can finish app-stub and then move on to the other templates!

Comment 3

[Soledad Penades [:sole] [:spenades]]

I've been looking at x-tags but I'm not quite sure where to start (this might be a good opportunity to look at them from the point of view of a total newcomer and make sure they are easy to pick up and use). We can comment this later-I'm on IRC.

mozApps: OK, let's leave it as it is for now.

Styling: I know it gets personal, that's why I wasn't totally sure, but a bit of resetting won't hurt: something that we always put in when building an app, and ensures that you get the same (or very close) output in every browser. Then developers can remove it altogether, or add more if they want to (or maybe even leave it as it is).

Re: payments + zepto. I would suggest doing another skeletal template like this one but a little bit more advanced and that included all that. Maybe some fake payment like your game does? So it's got the lifecycle already sketched and anyone cloning it would just have to "fill in the blanks" or modify very little code.

(Btw I guess you meant 'github' and not bugzilla for specific PR! :-))