Do we need to reinvient the wheel with another front-end JavaScript framework? Apparently we do!
Wheel.js is a front-end framework cobbled together from a bunch of great tools. The reason to use Wheel.js over other frameworks is that Wheel.js is designed to address the needs of mobile web development first, not as an afterthought. Of course, it works great for desktop web too.
Another selling point for for Wheel.js, which is of course free and needs no selling, is that it is built for progressive appification. You can start with the old-school style of adding js interactivity a little at a time. Then without making a massive technical-debt style down payment on a MV* framework … you get it for free. It is just here in Wheel.js waiting for you.
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Touch events are awesome UI, but have detection, implementation gotchas
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Connectivity can’t be assumed, so your app has to thrive offline
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Bandwidth is tiny, so your framework needs to be small and load itself intelligently
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If you aren’t optimizing your mobile web experience, you are loosing lots of audience
Wheel.js is easy to use. It is focused on the things that are central to JavaScript application development, managing views. In Wheel.js, the View is King. And what is a View? It’s not a template. That is a separate beastie, used by the View to render DOM. The View is the object responsible for interactions on a given bit of DOM and of course changing the rendered DOM. These two concepts are more formally divided into the controller and view. Maybe that is coming soon, but at the moment, life seems simple and managable with just the view.
At the start of a project, it isn’t always clear how much responsibility will lie of the server and how much will be given to the client. Wheel.js does not force you to choose a full application system upfront. You can start with a little bit of Wheel and work up.
When you do need a full application framework, Wheel.js gives you more of the moving parts that help an application be mobile:
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An application class and object for containing all your setup logic
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Systems for managing the user’s online/offline status
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Request queues that send requests only when the app is online, and are intelligent about serializing requests for related objects
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Intelligent loading where a base layer is sent, sniffs for features, and requests more javascript
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Zepto for applicable browsers
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jQuery for ones that can’t Zepto
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Modernizr for detecting capabilities, and loading needed polyfills
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Mustache for near logicless rendering
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Object-oriented design through the whole stack, so you can override/customize anything anywhere!
Yeah, just look at that last point. Almost everything is built like an object, so anything can be overriden and customized. My hope is that you won’t have to dig deep into the internals of Wheel to go changing low-level methods. Things should just work, but when you have that special need, you also have complete ownership of the code.
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Drag and Drop HTML5 polyfill for mobile
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Poller/Socket support
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Rails Generators
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Non-Rails usage and dependency managment
Umm, yeah. The roadmap has this becoming a Rails plugin and a more general available package for non-Rails apps. Right now it is just a loose collection of files.
There is a manifest directory. If you are using Rails, you will want to copy the whole Wheel.js library into /vendor/assets/javascripts. From there you can link to the manifests of interest.
The typical path for a full Wheel.js stack is to link to the base.js manifest. This manifest in addition to loading a series of required files, sniffs for features, and makes a request for additional files. Right now the main test
Still under development, stay tuned
Using a non-standard manifest in Rails requires you to change your app level configuration. Inside /config/application.rb, you need to add your manefest name to the line that declares them.
config.assets.precompile += %w( application.css app.js init.js ) # or whatever they are called
Sadly, the asset pipeline was not designed for dynamically requsting the parts of the javascript application that the browser needs, so true feature sniffing and polyfilling is just a server dream.
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Talk to me, through github, or email, or wherever. I would love to hear your feedback.
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Or checkout the pivotaltracker project: www.pivotaltracker.com/projects/536517
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Or just fork this project, test and contribute. Don’t forget the test part.
Copyright © 2012 Kane Baccigalupi. See LICENSE.txt for further details.