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Concept

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ebollens edited this page Aug 21, 2012 · 5 revisions

The following is a general concept sheet for WebBlocks (also available for public access on the MWF wiki here). Any update to this wiki page should be reflected there as well.

What is WebBlocks?

Out of the box, WebBlocks is a platform for building full-featured, responsive sites with modern web technologies. To this end, it leverages existing best-in-breed web tools, modern web standards, and a large library of UI elements and Javascript interactivity libraries.

At it's core, WebBlocks can best be categorized as a highly modular architecture for building CSS and Javascript assets, accompanied by images, fonts, etc. To this end, it can be customized in numerous ways, fitted to any number of development paradigms, and integrated into almost any existing web solution.

The WebBlocks Strategy

  • The modern web is full of powerful technologies. However, they're not integrated, and web designers are left to fend for themselves. Rather than reinvent, WebBlocks assembles these tools for a powerful responsive web toolkit straight out of the box.
  • UI frameworks (Bootstrap, HTML 5 Boilerplate, Foundation, etc.) each provide a markup standard. Rather than directly extending one, however, WebBlocks makes it possible to integrate with any UI framework through the use of adapters, defining its own semantic markup structure that applies to all.
  • WebBlocks is built through a highly modular and configurable architecture, meaning that it can be configured to include only exactly what a particular user desires. This reduces the size of the build in the event that not all of its modules and packages are needed.
  • WebBlocks stylesheets are defined with SASS and Compass. SASS is a precompiler for CSS and Compass is an extremely useful set of SASS utility functions. This makes it very easy to build large-scale CSS in a manageable way.
  • WebBlocks is built using Ruby and Node.js packages. However, as it produces static web assets (CSS, JS, images, etc.), it can be deployed in any environment, making it truly platform independent for deployment.
  • WebBlocks looks at federation as first-class citizens. An organization can fork WebBlocks, add its own extensions and then redistribute it to units and other organizations that may do the same or deploy it as is.
  • WebBlocks is highly configurable, making it possible to integrate (!) it into any existing build cycle.

(!) access required to GitHub

Getting Involved

If you want just to listen in and watch:

If you want to get involved developing:

  • Subscribe to the mailing list and get access to GitHub (see above)
  • Call in to the biweekly meetings (details here) (!)
  • Jump in and start discussing issues in the issue tracker (!)
  • Find an issue you're interested and ask to take over it (!)

Involvement of any sort is extremely welcome!

(!) access required to GitHub

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