"Getting started", tutorial

[e-oz]

Hello.
Please find some time to create small (but important) step-by-step tutorial for new users of the Flight.
How to "install", create initial tree of application, how to start build (write) application and so on.

[TaraRed]

Yes, it would definitely help to make learning Flight more iterative than to have to read the current reference documentation several times. Currently some words are used before they are defined, and when you get to the definition there's a lot of information around there that the user doesn't really have to know when starting out with the Flight framework. It took me about three reads to clearly understand the general concept.

We would also appreciate it if the example had comments that explain what the code does.

[angus-c]

How to Install is here https://github.com/twitter/flight#installation
General suggestions are good - will work on it.

[e-oz]

Thank you!
I hope "bower" will not be required but only recommended. Because, 1) it's not so obvious how to install bower in Windows (I suppose I need cygwin) and we need to install node and npm also; 2) I prefer to use jQuery hosted by Google CDN. I understand it's only me, but I think some users will share my opinion :)

[ericelliott]

I'll second the bower thing.. in fact, I'll go even further and ask for a CommonJS port that we can use with Browserify or Stitch.

[alex-seville]

@Jamm,

1. If you install node+npm you shouldn't need cygwin to install bower. I've installed bower without cygwin on Windows 7.

However, es5-shim uses a symbolic link for it's component.json file in bower (to point to the package.json, to avoid having to maintain both). This symbolic link will likely cause a bower installation of Flight to fail.

Luckily I found a workaround, if you create a .bowerrc file and add { "json":"package.json" } to it you can install Flight without any problem.

2. There's nothing to stop you from using jQuery hosted anywhere, or any local copy you might have. You specific the jQuery script reference manually in your HTML page or requirejs config. You could always use the bower-installed copy as a local fallback.

[angus-c]

@alex-seville @Jamm see also #19

[necolas]

Anyone interested in a quick-start Flight application might be interested in using our generator-flight module.

It's a Node.js module that you can install and use to generate a boilerplate Flight application for you - all the dependencies, the application structure, the module loading, and the test setup. It's the easiest way to get set up very quickly with a modern, automated workflow.

If you're very hesitant to use Node and Node-based tools (but you really should give them a try!), then you can at least get some guidance on a suitable application structure from the generator-flight README.

I hope that helps a little while we work on further supporting documentation.

[necolas]

Thanks. Closing and moving to the website repo: flightjs/flightjs.github.io#2