Alternatives to Material Design for Bootstrap

I'm planning to create a web application and also a mobile application to provide a very good shopping experience to the end customers. Shortly, my application will be aggregate the product details from difference sources and giving a clear picture to the user that when and where to buy that product with best in Quality and cost.

I have planned to develop this in many milestones for adding N number of features and I have picked my first part to complete the core part (aggregate the product details from different sources).

As per my work experience and knowledge, I have chosen the followings stacks to this mission.

UI: I would like to develop this application using React, React Router and React Native since I'm a little bit familiar on this and also most importantly these will help on developing both web and mobile apps. In addition, I'm gonna use the stacks JavaScript, jQuery, jQuery UI, jQuery Mobile, Bootstrap wherever required.

Service: I have planned to use Java as the main business layer language as I have 7+ years of experience on this I believe I can do better work using Java than other languages. In addition, I'm thinking to use the stacks Node.js.

Database and ORM: I'm gonna pick MySQL as DB and Hibernate as ORM since I have a piece of good knowledge and also work experience on this combination.

Search Engine: I need to deal with a large amount of product data and it's in-detailed info to provide enough details to end user at the same time I need to focus on the performance area too. so I have decided to use Solr as a search engine for product search and suggestions. In addition, I'm thinking to replace Solr by Elasticsearch once explored/reviewed enough about Elasticsearch.

Host: As of now, my plan to complete the application with decent features first and deploy it in a free hosting environment like Docker and Heroku and then once it is stable then I have planned to use the AWS products Amazon S3, EC2, Amazon RDS and Amazon Route 53. I'm not sure about Microsoft Azure that what is the specialty in it than Heroku and Amazon EC2 Container Service. Anyhow, I will do explore these once again and pick the best suite one for my requirement once I reached this level.

Build and Repositories: I have decided to choose Apache Maven and Git as these are my favorites and also so popular on respectively build and repositories.

Additional Utilities :) - I would like to choose Codacy for code review as their Startup plan will be very helpful to this application. I'm already experienced with Google CheckStyle and SonarQube even I'm looking something on Codacy.

Happy Coding! Suggestions are welcome! :)

Thanks, Ganesa

For Etom, a side project. We wanted to test an idea for a future and bigger project.

What Etom does is searching places. Right now, it leverages the Google Maps API. For that, we found a React component that makes this integration easy because using Google Maps API is not possible via normal API requests.

You kind of need a map to work as a proxy between the software and Google Maps API.

We hate configuration(coming from Rails world) so also decided to use Create React App because setting up a React app, with all the toys, it's a hard job.

Thanks to all the people behind Create React App it's easier to start any React application.

We also chose a module called Reactstrap which is Bootstrap UI in React components.

An important thing in this side project(and in the bigger project plan) is to measure visitor through out the app. For that we researched and found that Keen was a good choice(very good free tier limits) and also it is very simple to setup and real simple to send data to

Slack and Trello are our defaults tools to comunicate ideas and discuss topics, so, no brainer using them as well for this project.

I picked up an idea to develop and it was no brainer I had to go with React for the frontend. I was faced with challenges when it came to what component framework to use. I had worked extensively with Material-UI but I needed something different that would offer me wider range of well customized components (I became pretty slow at styling). I brought in Evergreen after several sampling and reads online but again, after several prototype development against Evergreen—since I was using TypeScript and I had to import custom Type, it felt exhaustive. After I validated Evergreen with the designs of the idea I was developing, I also noticed I might have to do a lot of styling. I later stumbled on Material Kit, the one specifically made for React . It was promising with beautifully crafted components, most of which fits into the designs pages I had on ground.

A major problem of Material Kit for me is it isn't written in TypeScript and there isn't any plans to support its TypeScript version. I rolled up my sleeve and started converting their components to TypeScript and if you'll ask me, I am still on it.

In summary, I used the Create React App with TypeScript support and I am spending some time converting Material Kit to TypeScript before I start developing against it. All of these components are going to be hosted on Bit.

If you feel I am crazy or I have gotten something wrong, I'll be willing to listen to your opinion. Also, if you want to have a share of whatever TypeScript version of Material Kit I end up coming up with, let me know.

I just finished tweaking styles details of my hobby project MovieGeeks (https://moviegeeks.co/): The minimalist Online Movie Catalog

This time I want to share my thoughts on the Tech-Stack I decided to use on the Frontend: React, React Router, Material-UI and React-Apollo:

1. React is by far the Front-End "framework" with the biggest community. Some of the newest features like Suspense and Hooks makes it even more awesome and gives you even more power to write clean UI's

2. Material UI is a very solid and stable set of react components that not only look good, but also are easy to use and customize. This was my first time using this library and I am very happy with the result

3. React-Apollo in my opinion is the best GraphQL client for a React application. Easy to use and understand and it gives you awesome features out of the box like cache. With libraries like react-apollo-hooks you can even use it with the hooks api which makes the code cleaner and easier to follow.

Any feedback is much appreciated :)

TL;DR: Shall I keep developing with Nuxt.js 2 and wait for a migration guide to Nuxt 3? Or start developing with Vue.js 3 using Vite, and then migrate to Nuxt 3 when it comes out?

Long version: We have an old web application running on AngularJS and Bootstrap for frontend. It is mostly a user interface to easily read and post data to our engine.

We want to redo this web application. Started from scratch using the newest version of Angular 2+ and Material Design for frontend. We haven't even finished rewriting half of the application and it is becoming dreadful to work on.

• The cold start takes too much time
• Every little change reload the whole page. Seconds to minutes of development lost looking at a loading blank page just changing css
• Code maintainability is getting worse... again... as the application grows, since we must create everytime 5 files for a new page (html, component.ts, module.ts, scss, routing.ts)

I'm currently trying to code a Proof of Concept using Nuxt.js and Tailwind CSS. But the thing is, Vue.js 3 is out and has interesting features such as the composition API, teleport and fragments. Also we wish to use the Vite frontend tooling, to improve our time developing regardless of our application size. It feels like a better alternative to Webpack, which is what Nuxt 2 uses.

I'm already trying Nuxt.js with the nuxt-vite experimental module, but many nuxt modules are still incompatible from the time I'm posting this. It is also becoming cumbersome not being able to use teleport or fragments, but that can be circumvented with good components.

What I'm asking is, what should be the wisest decision: keep developing with Nuxt 2 and wait for a migration guide to Nuxt 3? Or start developing with Vue.js 3 using Vite, and then migrate to Nuxt 3 when it comes out?

I am a bit confused when to choose Bootstrap vs Material Design or Tailwind CSS, and why? I mean, in which kind of projects we can work with bootstrap/Material/Tailwind CSS? If the design is made up on the grid, we prefer bootstrap, and if flat design, then material design. Similarly, when do we choose tailwind CSS?

Any suggestion would be appreciated?

Oof. I have truly hated JavaScript for a long time. Like, for over twenty years now. Like, since the Clinton administration. It's always been a nightmare to deal with all of the aspects of that silly language.

But wowza, things have changed. Tooling is just way, way better. I'm primarily web-oriented, and using React and Apollo together the past few years really opened my eyes to building rich apps. And I deeply apologize for using the phrase rich apps; I don't think I've ever said such Enterprisey words before.

But yeah, things are different now. I still love Rails, and still use it for a lot of apps I build. But it's that silly rich apps phrase that's the problem. Users have way more comprehensive expectations than they did even five years ago, and the JS community does a good job at building tools and tech that tackle the problems of making heavy, complicated UI and frontend work.

Obviously there's a lot of things happening here, so just saying "JavaScript isn't terrible" might encompass a huge amount of libraries and frameworks. But if you're like me, yeah, give things another shot- I'm somehow not hating on JavaScript anymore and... gulp... I kinda love it.

How Uber developed the open source, end-to-end distributed tracing Jaeger , now a CNCF project:

Distributed tracing is quickly becoming a must-have component in the tools that organizations use to monitor their complex, microservice-based architectures. At Uber, our open source distributed tracing system Jaeger saw large-scale internal adoption throughout 2016, integrated into hundreds of microservices and now recording thousands of traces every second.

Here is the story of how we got here, from investigating off-the-shelf solutions like Zipkin, to why we switched from pull to push architecture, and how distributed tracing will continue to evolve:

https://eng.uber.com/distributed-tracing/

(GitHub Pages : https://www.jaegertracing.io/, GitHub: https://github.com/jaegertracing/jaeger)

Bindings/Operator: Python Java Node.js Go C++ Kubernetes JavaScript OpenShift C# Apache Spark

How Uber developed the open source, end-to-end distributed tracing Jaeger , now a CNCF project:

Distributed tracing is quickly becoming a must-have component in the tools that organizations use to monitor their complex, microservice-based architectures. At Uber, our open source distributed tracing system Jaeger saw large-scale internal adoption throughout 2016, integrated into hundreds of microservices and now recording thousands of traces every second.

Here is the story of how we got here, from investigating off-the-shelf solutions like Zipkin, to why we switched from pull to push architecture, and how distributed tracing will continue to evolve:

https://eng.uber.com/distributed-tracing/

(GitHub Pages : https://www.jaegertracing.io/, GitHub: https://github.com/jaegertracing/jaeger)

Bindings/Operator: Python Java Node.js Go C++ Kubernetes JavaScript OpenShift C# Apache Spark

Winds 2.0 is an open source Podcast/RSS reader developed by Stream with a core goal to enable a wide range of developers to contribute.

We chose JavaScript because nearly every developer knows or can, at the very least, read JavaScript. With ES6 and Node.js v10.x.x, it’s become a very capable language. Async/Await is powerful and easy to use (Async/Await vs Promises). Babel allows us to experiment with next-generation JavaScript (features that are not in the official JavaScript spec yet). Yarn allows us to consistently install packages quickly (and is filled with tons of new tricks)

We’re using JavaScript for everything – both front and backend. Most of our team is experienced with Go and Python, so Node was not an obvious choice for this app.

Sure... there will be haters who refuse to acknowledge that there is anything remotely positive about JavaScript (there are even rants on Hacker News about Node.js); however, without writing completely in JavaScript, we would not have seen the results we did.

#FrameworksFullStack #Languages

I just finished the very first version of my new hobby project: #MovieGeeks. It is a minimalist online movie catalog for you to save the movies you want to see and for rating the movies you already saw. This is just the beginning as I am planning to add more features on the lines of sharing and discovery

For the #BackEnd I decided to use Node.js , GraphQL and MongoDB:

1. Node.js has a huge community so it will always be a safe choice in terms of libraries and finding solutions to problems you may have

2. GraphQL because I needed to improve my skills with it and because I was never comfortable with the usual REST approach. I believe GraphQL is a better option as it feels more natural to write apis, it improves the development velocity, by definition it fixes the over-fetching and under-fetching problem that is so common on REST apis, and on top of that, the community is getting bigger and bigger.

3. MongoDB was my choice for the database as I already have a lot of experience working on it and because, despite of some bad reputation it has acquired in the last months, I still believe it is a powerful database for at least a very long list of use cases such as the one I needed for my website

When I joined NYT there was already broad dissatisfaction with the LAMP (Linux Apache HTTP Server MySQL PHP) Stack and the front end framework, in particular. So, I wasn't passing judgment on it. I mean, LAMP's fine, you can do good work in LAMP. It's a little dated at this point, but it's not ... I didn't want to rip it out for its own sake, but everyone else was like, "We don't like this, it's really inflexible." And I remember from being outside the company when that was called MIT FIVE when it had launched. And been observing it from the outside, and I was like, you guys took so long to do that and you did it so carefully, and yet you're not happy with your decisions. Why is that? That was more the impetus. If we're going to do this again, how are we going to do it in a way that we're gonna get a better result?

So we're moving quickly away from LAMP, I would say. So, right now, the new front end is React based and using Apollo. And we've been in a long, protracted, gradual rollout of the core experiences.

React is now talking to GraphQL as a primary API. There's a Node.js back end, to the front end, which is mainly for server-side rendering, as well.

Behind there, the main repository for the GraphQL server is a big table repository, that we call Bodega because it's a convenience store. And that reads off of a Kafka pipeline.

Few years ago we were building a Next.js site with a few simple forms. This required handling forms validation and submission, but instead of picking some forms library, we went with plain JavaScript and constraint validation API in HTML5. This shaved off a few KBs of dependencies and gave us full control over the validation behavior and look. I describe this approach, with its pros and cons, in a blog post.

I needed to choose a full stack of tools for cross platform mobile application design & development. After much research and trying different tools, these are what I came up with that work for me today:

For the client coding I chose Framework7 because of its performance, easy learning curve, and very well designed, beautiful UI widgets. I think it's perfect for solo development or small teams. I didn't like React Native. It felt heavy to me and rigid. Framework7 allows the use of #CSS3, which I think is the best technology to come out of the #WWW movement. No other tech has been able to allow designers and developers to develop such flexible, high performance, customisable user interface elements that are highly responsive and hardware accelerated before. Now #CSS3 includes variables and flexboxes it is truly a powerful language and there is no longer a need for preprocessors such as #SCSS / #Sass / #less. React Native contains a very limited interpretation of #CSS3 which I found very frustrating after using #CSS3 for some years already and knowing its powerful features. The other very nice feature of Framework7 is that you can even build for the browser if you want your app to be available for desktop web browsers. The latest release also includes the ability to build for #Electron so you can have MacOS, Windows and Linux desktop apps. This is not possible with React Native yet.

Framework7 runs on top of Apache Cordova. Cordova and webviews have been slated as being slow in the past. Having a game developer background I found the tweeks to make it run as smooth as silk. One of those tweeks is to use WKWebView. Another important one was using srcset on images.

I use #Template7 for the for the templating system which is a no-nonsense mobile-centric #HandleBars style extensible templating system. It's easy to write custom helpers for, is fast and has a small footprint. I'm not forced into a new paradigm or learning some new syntax. It operates with standard JavaScript, HTML5 and CSS 3. It's written by the developer of Framework7 and so dovetails with it as expected.

I configured TypeScript to work with the latest version of Framework7. I consider TypeScript to be one of the best creations to come out of Microsoft in some time. They must have an amazing team working on it. It's very powerful and flexible. It helps you catch a lot of bugs and also provides code completion in supporting IDEs. So for my IDE I use Visual Studio Code which is a blazingly fast and silky smooth editor that integrates seamlessly with TypeScript for the ultimate type checking setup (both products are produced by Microsoft).

I use Webpack and Babel to compile the JavaScript. TypeScript can compile to JavaScript directly but Babel offers a few more options and polyfills so you can use the latest (and even prerelease) JavaScript features today and compile to be backwards compatible with virtually any browser. My favorite recent addition is "optional chaining" which greatly simplifies and increases readability of a number of sections of my code dealing with getting and setting data in nested objects.

I use some Ruby scripts to process images with ImageMagick and pngquant to optimise for size and even auto insert responsive image code into the HTML5. Ruby is the ultimate cross platform scripting language. Even as your scripts become large, Ruby allows you to refactor your code easily and make it Object Oriented if necessary. I find it the quickest and easiest way to maintain certain aspects of my build process.

For the user interface design and prototyping I use Figma. Figma has an almost identical user interface to #Sketch but has the added advantage of being cross platform (MacOS and Windows). Its real-time collaboration features are outstanding and I use them a often as I work mostly on remote projects. Clients can collaborate in real-time and see changes I make as I make them. The clickable prototyping features in Figma are also very well designed and mean I can send clickable prototypes to clients to try user interface updates as they are made and get immediate feedback. I'm currently also evaluating the latest version of #AdobeXD as an alternative to Figma as it has the very cool auto-animate feature. It doesn't have real-time collaboration yet, but I heard it is proposed for 2019.

For the UI icons I use Font Awesome Pro. They have the largest selection and best looking icons you can find on the internet with several variations in styles so you can find most of the icons you want for standard projects.

For the backend I was using the #GraphCool Framework. As I later found out, #GraphQL still has some way to go in order to provide the full power of a mature graph query language so later in my project I ripped out #GraphCool and replaced it with CouchDB and Pouchdb. Primarily so I could provide good offline app support. CouchDB with Pouchdb is very flexible and efficient combination and overcomes some of the restrictions I found in #GraphQL and hence #GraphCool also. The most impressive and important feature of CouchDB is its replication. You can configure it in various ways for backups, fault tolerance, caching or conditional merging of databases. CouchDB and Pouchdb even supports storing, retrieving and serving binary or image data or other mime types. This removes a level of complexity usually present in database implementations where binary or image data is usually referenced through an #HTML5 link. With CouchDB and Pouchdb apps can operate offline and sync later, very efficiently, when the network connection is good.

I use PhoneGap when testing the app. It auto-reloads your app when its code is changed and you can also install it on Android phones to preview your app instantly. iOS is a bit more tricky cause of Apple's policies so it's not available on the App Store, but you can build it and install it yourself to your device.

So that's my latest mobile stack. What tools do you use? Have you tried these ones?

When I joined NYT there was already broad dissatisfaction with the LAMP (Linux Apache HTTP Server MySQL PHP) Stack and the front end framework, in particular. So, I wasn't passing judgment on it. I mean, LAMP's fine, you can do good work in LAMP. It's a little dated at this point, but it's not ... I didn't want to rip it out for its own sake, but everyone else was like, "We don't like this, it's really inflexible." And I remember from being outside the company when that was called MIT FIVE when it had launched. And been observing it from the outside, and I was like, you guys took so long to do that and you did it so carefully, and yet you're not happy with your decisions. Why is that? That was more the impetus. If we're going to do this again, how are we going to do it in a way that we're gonna get a better result?

So we're moving quickly away from LAMP, I would say. So, right now, the new front end is React based and using Apollo. And we've been in a long, protracted, gradual rollout of the core experiences.

React is now talking to GraphQL as a primary API. There's a Node.js back end, to the front end, which is mainly for server-side rendering, as well.

Behind there, the main repository for the GraphQL server is a big table repository, that we call Bodega because it's a convenience store. And that reads off of a Kafka pipeline.

Our whole Node.js backend stack consists of the following tools:

• Lerna as a tool for multi package and multi repository management
• npm as package manager
• NestJS as Node.js framework
• TypeScript as programming language
• ExpressJS as web server
• Swagger UI for visualizing and interacting with the API’s resources
• Postman as a tool for API development
• TypeORM as object relational mapping layer
• JSON Web Token for access token management

The main reason we have chosen Node.js over PHP is related to the following artifacts:

• Made for the web and widely in use: Node.js is a software platform for developing server-side network services. Well-known projects that rely on Node.js include the blogging software Ghost, the project management tool Trello and the operating system WebOS. Node.js requires the JavaScript runtime environment V8, which was specially developed by Google for the popular Chrome browser. This guarantees a very resource-saving architecture, which qualifies Node.js especially for the operation of a web server. Ryan Dahl, the developer of Node.js, released the first stable version on May 27, 2009. He developed Node.js out of dissatisfaction with the possibilities that JavaScript offered at the time. The basic functionality of Node.js has been mapped with JavaScript since the first version, which can be expanded with a large number of different modules. The current package managers (npm or Yarn) for Node.js know more than 1,000,000 of these modules.
• Fast server-side solutions: Node.js adopts the JavaScript "event-loop" to create non-blocking I/O applications that conveniently serve simultaneous events. With the standard available asynchronous processing within JavaScript/TypeScript, highly scalable, server-side solutions can be realized. The efficient use of the CPU and the RAM is maximized and more simultaneous requests can be processed than with conventional multi-thread servers.
• A language along the entire stack: Widely used frameworks such as React or AngularJS or Vue.js, which we prefer, are written in JavaScript/TypeScript. If Node.js is now used on the server side, you can use all the advantages of a uniform script language throughout the entire application development. The same language in the back- and frontend simplifies the maintenance of the application and also the coordination within the development team.
• Flexibility: Node.js sets very few strict dependencies, rules and guidelines and thus grants a high degree of flexibility in application development. There are no strict conventions so that the appropriate architecture, design structures, modules and features can be freely selected for the development.