Meeting 2014 04 14

Information

• Location: Math Sciences 5907
• Date/Time: Monday April 14 from 1:00 to 2:00 PM Pacific Time
• Conference Line: 888-921-8686 #3102061670

Attendees

• Eric Bollens (UCLA)
• Sara Leavitt (UCB)
• Brian Young (Stanford)
• Jim Watkins (UCLA)
• Alex Wu (UCSD)
• Nathan (UCLA)
• Donny (UCLA)
• Florence Lei (UCLA)
• Chris Patterson (UCLA)
• Yuki (UCB)
• Dwayne Washington (UCLA)
• Joel Bellon (UCLA)
• Amit Yaz (UCLA)
• John Newell (UCLA)

Project

• MMWCON
  • Call for proposals closed a couple weeks ago
  • Speaker notifications will go out in the next week
  • Rates will be posted in the next week
• Next Generation Mobile
  • Meeting last Friday with UCSD
  • Some key differences in the thought process that arose during this meeting:
    • Personalization based on context
      • Consider time, location, institutional role, etc.
      • No longer just a "bucket of apps mirroring the home screen"
      • Possibly the card pattern from Google Now?
    • Device optimized rather than agnostic
      • UI/UX based on platform
      • Recognize native app stores as primary distribution channel
    • Meet and exceed user performance expectations
      • Use shared web platform when possible as independent of server / platform
      • Rely on native where expectations can't be met by the web
    • Distributed architecture
      • Expanded from framework tooling to need for APIs
      • Consider different patterns for helping developers map APIs to webpages
    • Shared web components
      • Can be used in native (iOS, Android, etc.) plus web
      • Right now, pendulum has swung in the native direction, but in a few years, it may swing the other way
      • Distribution channel, not features, are becoming the key reason people go native
        • Web components minimize redundant development for each platform
    • Keep things simple
      • Should still provide a case as simple as "add link tag, add script tag, and drop in markup"
    • Consider the mobile app as a "live canvas"
      • Changes don't just happen on navigation events
  • Will be working on a vision document over the next few weeks

WebBlocks 1

• Issues? Bugs? Comments?
• Showcase: Responsive Grid Systems
  • From WebBlocks...
    • Container: http://ucla.github.io/WebBlocks/doc/#API/Base/Structure/Container
    • Grid: http://ucla.github.io/WebBlocks/doc/#API/Base/Structure/Grid
    • Cluster: http://ucla.github.io/WebBlocks/doc/#API/Base/Structure/Cluster
  • Alternative approaches
    • Bootstrap: http://getbootstrap.com/css/#grid
    • Bourbon Neat: http://neat.bourbon.io
• Any nominations for next week's showcase?

WebBlocks 2

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DEVELOPMENT DISCLAIMER

While the WebBlocks 2 repository contains working code, and while some specifics are discussed herein, the implementation may change significantly before release. As such, no guarantees are made about the consistency of the API at this time. Anything discussed herein may change in the future, up until the point of a beta release.

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• Using prototype for development of the Community App Sharing Architecture reference implementation
  • https://github.com/AppSharing/casa-admin-outlet/blob/master/Blockfile.rb
• Compilation process itself works pretty well (few minor issues on Huboard)
• Blockfile DSL needs refactoring:
  • The *_file definitions should support dependency linkages (rather than just the block definitions)
    • Both where file has dependencies and where other files/blocks depend on file
  • Should be able to define a dependency around a set of blocks rather than state it over and over
  • Need to add support for associating a set of blocks with another (groupings of blocks)
  • Helper definitions and factories should be created that mirror common patterns

Other

• Any other discussion items?