Site for 0.9 release

[addyosmani]

If anyone is interested in taking this on, we need to design/create a new site for Aura's 1.0 release. Feel free to let us know if you'd be up for helping with this :)

[saniko]

HI,
What exactly need to be done?
Is there any website mockups? initial design (i saw the loge), any special requirements ?

[addyosmani]

@saniko I love the GruntJS and EmberJS sites. We don't have any mockups or initial design just yet so its really flexible in terms of what we do. If someone could come up with a design that fits in well with the logo that would be great, otherwise we could strip the background from it and just go for something using the typography alone.

[sindresorhus]

Some questions that needs answering

• What would the site contain?
• What is the most important stuff? I guess Download, Docs and Demo.
• When and why would you need Aura?

What I think it needs

• A fully featured demo showing off the lib.
• I also think the site itself should be an front-end app using Aura. Dogfooding ftw!
• Docs with TOC and search
• Some examples of real-world usage. Are there any?
• Site should be responsive. Bootstrap grids (or any other) makes this simple
• Semantic HTML
• Hosted on GitHub Pages

[Francisc]

The home page should have a layman's description of just what Aura is. Why it exists, what problems it solves etc.

[sindresorhus]

Link of sites Addy likes:
http://gruntjs.com/
http://emberjs.com/

I also like these:
http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/ (except the navbar)
http://foundation.zurb.com/

[saniko]

OK, I will talk to our designer and see what he can come up with.
I will email you in couple of days.

Thanks
 
Dani Koren

---

From: Addy Osmani notifications@github.com
To: addyosmani/aura aura@noreply.github.com
Cc: saniko dani_koren@yahoo.com
Sent: Sunday, October 7, 2012 1:42 PM
Subject: Re: [aura] Site for 1.0 release (#132)

@saniko I love the GruntJS and EmberJS sites. We don't have any mockups or initial design just yet so its really flexible in terms of what we do. If someone could come up with a design that fits in well with the logo that would be great, otherwise we could strip the background from it and just go for something using the typography alone.
—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

[addyosmani]

I think @sindresorhus pretty much captured what the content should be (nice work!). In terms of us dogfooding with the site using it, that would be interesting to explore. I'll say lets try to get something basic done first and if we have time try refactoring to break it into widgets. I'd love to give someone that isnt as familiar with Aura the chance to help with the design etc :)

Would it make sense to start off with a bootstrap base so we get the grids etc. for free? Sindre's done some quite nice search/TOC sites for projects over the past few months so we might be able to use something existing, although, I imagine this behaviour could be in without too much effort.

++ on semantic HTML and hosted on gh-pages. I'm going to chase up a more featured demo. We need a killer app showing what you can do with Aura!

[tony]

Concurrences:

• +1 emberjs look.
• +1 GitHub Pages.
• +1 Real world usage, when we start getting sites up let's link to real sites + blog posts referencing aura

From me:

• Annotated Source - if we're in shape to do that, maybe
• Snippet / pattern community. An aura/backbone widget that feeds the latest backbone gists? Issues? Let's check github's api.
• Of course, we can link out to Nick and Addy's pattern tutorials/slides.
• HTML5 slide / pitch / tutorial on aura?
• Page overviewing our patterns / abstraction concepts. Perhaps call the page "Philosophy", "Architecture" or something :) Maybe split it into 2 pages, one for our patterns, the other for abstraction.
• "Getting Started" page, some snippets one what it takes to build a barebones app (what files to create as a boilerplate to begin)

[addyosmani]

I think that on the HTML5 deck + concepts side of things I have enough material that we can formalize into something useful. On annotated source, were you thinking something like docco?

[Francisc]

Does Aura have a "logo"? I think it would help.

[addyosmani]

yep. https://github.com/addyosmani/aura/raw/master/media/logo.jpg

[sindresorhus]

@addyosmani We need a vector version and a png without background

[tony]

docco.

do we want to op for the purple or something else. color scheme hexes/rgb for logo / site.

[tony]

aura irc channel. or a niche channel pivoted toward frontend JS devs that can cover aura, yeoman, patterns, anything dom and ecma? #yeoaura, #yeoaurabone, #backaurayeo

it'd be nice 1.0 to have at least one real app using it.

do we have a ballpark time we want 1.0 out the door? it may be a good idea to set up an issue / doc with a final checklist of todos. that can be done on here or wherever else is convenient.

[Francisc]

What's with the bear claws in the logo? Haha.

[addyosmani]

I think marionette have a dedicated channel for theirs so perhaps we could have one for aura. We have a dedicated one for yeoman already and patterns would be an interesting idea to explore later :)

I would like to get Aura out the door before the end of October if we think it's realistic. What do you guys think?

In terms of a real app, I've been thinking about that this afternoon. I would ideally like to refactor an existing 'real' app to use our widgets so we can show developers a before and after - I was thinking a Twitter API or GitHub API client could provide a nice multi-view demo that covers enough of the areas people want.

@tony a final checklist sounds like a good idea. How about we create an issue that ties together many of the items we want to complete in time?

[addyosmani]

@sindresorhus if we're dropping the background do you think we should try to put together an illustration/icon kind of deal or do you feel just the claws (i.e our 'aura' lines) are sufficient?

[Francisc]

A Twitter API client would be nice and always useful. It's important to document progress so that it's like a step-by-step tutorial rather than just the final code with a general explanation.

[addyosmani]

Another option is refactoring http://bbclonemail.herokuapp.com/. We could potentially also include some of the widgets we've already written.

[sindresorhus]

@addyosmani I think it's fine. We could always try to get a designer to toy with some ideas, but there aren't a lot of those in Open Source.

[addyosmani]

I won't be pushing anything for another few days, but I decided to experiment with creating a Facebook client we could use. It has a number of advantages like demonstrating authentication, being multi-view, handling pagination and so on. Right now its primarily read-only but could be useful if I can add in the ability to create new posts etc. too. I'll be creating first as a Backbone.js only app then widgetizing.

[sindresorhus]

^ Sounds like a plan, just keep in mind that the Facebook API is one of the worst APIs to work with. Poor docs, often breaks and slow.

[tony]

I also have a pet project being worked on that may definitely be pertinent to an excellent production app using aura. I will get back within 2 weeks whether or not this bears fruit.

[tony]

@addyosmani @sindresorhus #134 for release checklist.

[addyosmani]

Thanks tony!

[addyosmani]

I just wanted to check in case someone was able to take this on. If not, I suggest we just go with having a really kick-ass readme and use one of the GitHub Jekyll themes for rendering. We can probably come up with a transparent version of the logo to get us by branding wise for now.

Side: Would be great to have a read through of the existing readme to establish what if any areas require more work there.

[tony]

@addyosmani Regarding readme. Agreed.

[sindresorhus]

Where is the Open Source designers when u need them??

[unity]

We might be able to help :)
We did @mperham's Sidekiq website and Admin UI already...

We are using Aura as the foundation for our widget system, seems only fair we give back ;)

[addyosmani]

@unity That would be amazing :) We weren't going to aim for anything too high due to limited resources but if you guys would be able to help us get something out decent out the door for 1.0 that would be much appreciated :)

[Francisc]

OK, wow. That looks great.

[sindresorhus]

Optimization for the EyeCandy

Noticed some performance issues on my older Mac (canvas).

Your Feedback (did I say that already ? :) )

What more can I say than wow! So minimalistic and clean. And the header, bravo.

The only nitpick I can think of is that it would be more natural if the stars faded in and out. They currently suddenly appear and disappear.

Oh, and the site is currently unusable on iPhone. Looks like you're stealing touchmove or something.

[unity]

Anyone up for writing it ? :)

[unity]

@sindresorhus Thanks for the comments.

• Performance is currently a big issue, I'm seriously looking into that. I don't want to release something that would be performance-killing, so either I can find a way to improve, or I'll do something else.
• About the iPhone : I stole every touch event and left for a conference before testing yes :). Will be fixed :)
• The stars should appear and fade out reeeeally slowly. pop-in and outs are bugs, I'll look into that.
• I'm really working hard on the schema, for me it's the main point of the page. If you have any help to provide, for example in the form of a hand-drawn doodle, It'll be gladly welcome :p

[unity]

@sindresorhus @addyosmani @Francisc @robertd
New version available here :
http://hull.github.com/aura/

• Particle field performance has been improved. Is it sufficient ?
• The schema is awaiting your feedback. Is it correct ? should things be changed ?
• The schema entirely html, css & svg based, and animated.
• I added popovers for each part (widgets, sandbox, core, base, vendors)

For now the text is taken from Aura's current description of the modules.
If you want it updated, please tell us so !

Also, Vendors & Base have empty popovers.
If someone wants to write a few paragraphs to cover what Base & Vendors do, that would be great !

[sindresorhus]

The stars should appear and fade out reeeeally slowly. pop-in and outs are bugs, I'll look into that.

Seems like this happens when i switch back to the Aura site after a couple of minutes.

Particle field performance has been improved. Is it sufficient ?

Yup, much better

The schema entirely html, css & svg based, and animated.

So simple and elegant. I really like it! Combined with the pretty popovers it really makes Aura architecture approachable.

One thing I'm missing is a link to the demo.

[unity]

I can add a link to a demo page.
Is it out there already or do we need to build one ?

I'll look closely into the particles flicker, I have an idea where that could come from.

[sindresorhus]

I was thinking about this https://github.com/addyosmani/aura/blob/master/src/index.html

[addyosmani]

It was a pleasure meeting you both in person @unity :)

Some further feedback on the site: I noticed that on mobile the section right after the header appears to fold prematurely so that the headline isn't visible (tested on Chrome/Android 4.2). On desktop it looks great though!

[unity]

Same here !

Thanks for the feedback, I'll look into it and try to reproduce. Don't own
an android though :)

Glad you like it, it's a fun project :)

On Tuesday, December 4, 2012, Addy Osmani wrote:

It was a pleasure meeting you both in person @unityhttps://github.com/unity:)

Some further feedback on the site: I noticed that on mobile the section
right after the header appears to fold prematurely so that the headline
isn't visible (tested on Chrome/Android 4.2). On desktop it looks great
though!

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/addyosmani/aura/issues/132#issuecomment-11017157.

[unity]

Just pushed an updated version with the following changes :

• Attempt to fix flickering of particles
• Demo link (I bundled the demo folder with it), although I'm not certain the demo in it's current state (it being "buggy") serves the project best.

All that would be missing would be a bit of text for the Base & Vendors, and the site could be pushed IMHO.

http://hull.github.com/aura/

[robertd]

Woorks good on iPhone 4S. Particle effect flickers when scrolling but
nothing serious. Great job !!!

Sent from my iPhone

On Dec 5, 2012, at 11:26 AM, Romain Dardour notifications@github.com
wrote:

Just pushed an updated version with the following changes :

• Attempt to fix flickering of particles
• Demo link (I bundled the demo folder with it), although I'm not
  certain the demo in it's current state (it being "buggy") serves the
  project best.

All that would be missing would be a bit of text for the Base & Vendors,
and the site could be pushed IMHO.

http://hull.github.com/aura/

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on
GitHubhttps://github.com/addyosmani/aura/issues/132#issuecomment-11053780.

[addyosmani]

Looks great on Chrome for Android here too. Fantastic job guys :)

[unity]

A pleasure.
Incidentally, we launched our own site today :
http://hull.io

If you check it out, you'll see that our product might be a cool demo of a
large scale aura app :)

Regards.

R.

On Wednesday, December 5, 2012, Addy Osmani wrote:

Looks great on Chrome for Android here too. Fantastic job guys :)

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/addyosmani/aura/issues/132#issuecomment-11055328.

[addyosmani]

What do we think about including apps/sites using Aura on the homepage? The two most recent I'm aware of are:

• hull.io
• MIT Reap

But I know there are more. I can tweet out to ask about others using it if we think its a solid idea.

[unity]

Only good things :)

If you want a "using aura" section tell me I'll add one with great pride
and pleasure.

Still missing a bit of copy btw but I'm holding back writing it until the
naming changes discussions have been sorted out

Romain Dardour, hull
romain@hull.io

On Dec 15, 2012, at 4:43 PM, Addy Osmani notifications@github.com wrote:

What do we think about including apps/sites using Aura on the homepage? The
two most recent I'm aware of are:

• hull.io
• MIT Reap http://www.bobholt.me/2012/09/how-it-was-built-mit-reap/

But I know there are more. I can tweet out to ask about others using it if
we think its a solid idea.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on
GitHubhttps://github.com/addyosmani/aura/issues/132#issuecomment-11405799.

[addyosmani]

I would love a "Using Aura" section :) We'll try to wrap up the naming changes as soon as we can!

[addyosmani]

As part of the conversation around the site, we should think about how we're also going to update the language in the README.

At present, we call Aura a "decoupled, event-driven architecture for widget based applications". I've been talking to Aura users recently and a few feel that we're limiting ourselves by saying we're specifically for widgets.

I was wondering if anyone else felt the same way. I also wonder if we should be making more of a deal that we offer a "scalable" architecture (ala Zakas) or whether we think developers get this without it needing to be said more clearly. I've noticed that some of the Aura alternatives do this.

Btw, in case anyone is interested the alternatives to Aura that are out there at the moment include:

Kernel.js, ScaleApp, Teriffically and Hydra.js.

Useful to look at what they're doing for their sites/language.

[unity]

I think that most of these sites (including aura's which I'm working on)
focus on explaining how it works whereas the most important thing is how it
helps.

The benefits should be understandable by developers of much less expertise
than the ones developing aura or even using it. The average jquery
developer should be able to understand the problem and how aura provides a
solution.

That does not mean it should be usable by them, but explaining the problem
and solution should make them want to use it and improve.

I'll have a more detailed look at all those sites, try to extract the good
and post it here.
Explaining the problem and solution should be the matter of 2 small
paragraphs, no more.
All those sites say a bit much IMHO.

On 16 déc. 2012, at 19:36, Addy Osmani notifications@github.com wrote:

As part of the conversation around the site, we should think about how
we're also going to update the language in the README.

At present, we call Aura a "decoupled, event-driven architecture for widget
based applications". I've been talking to Aura users recently and a few
feel that we're limiting ourselves by saying we're specifically for
widgets.

I was wondering if anyone else felt the same way. I also wonder if we
should be making more of a deal that we offer a "scalable" architecture
(ala Zakas) or whether we think developers get this without it needing to
be said more clearly. I've noticed that some of the Aura alternatives do
this.

Btw, in case anyone is interested the alternatives to Aura that are out
there at the moment include:

Kernel.js http://alanlindsay.me/kerneljs/, ScaleApp http://scaleapp.org/,
Teriffically http://terrifically.org/ and
Hydra.jshttps://github.com/tcorral/Hydra.js
.

Useful to look at what they're doing for their sites/language.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on
GitHubhttps://github.com/addyosmani/aura/issues/132#issuecomment-11420989.

[unity]

"Aura helps you write cleaner, more scalable apps."

Wdyt ?
Does it encompass what aura does ?

[addyosmani]

How about "Aura helps you write clean, scalable apps"? :)

[unity]

Looks good to me :)
Is that the new tagline then ?

Romain Dardour, hull
romain@hull.io
+33 6 20 555 666

On Tuesday, December 18, 2012 at 12:17 AM, Addy Osmani wrote:

How about "Aura helps you write clean, scalable apps"? :)

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub (https://github.com/addyosmani/aura/issues/132#issuecomment-11466738).

[addyosmani]

If no one disagrees I guess so :) //cc @tony

[sindresorhus]

I like it, succinct.

[tony]

"Aura helps you write clean, scalable apps"

Fine w/ me. :)

[addyosmani]

@sbellity @tony @atesgoral do we feel comfortable enough that the architecture concepts going into Aura 1.0, based on aura-express are stable/finalized at this point? If so, @unity might be able to update the mocks so that we can get a little further on the site :)

[unity]

I'd be glad to do that : I'll check up with @sbellity how the architecture changed and how to explain it

If I need anything written or explained from you guys, I'll post here !

On Saturday, January 12, 2013 at 12:25 PM, Addy Osmani wrote:

@sbellity (https://github.com/sbellity) @tony (https://github.com/tony) @atesgoral (https://github.com/atesgoral) do we feel comfortable enough that the architecture concepts going into Aura 1.0, based on aura-express are stable/finalized at this point? If so, @unity (https://github.com/unity) might be able to update the mocks so that we can get a little further on the site :)

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub (#132 (comment)).

[addyosmani]

That would be awesome!

[sbellity]

aura-express introduces important concepts :

• Aura is now extensible via the extensions system, which make a good basis for a rich ecosystem around the project.
• A set of conventions based on bower for dependencies.
• A richer widgets API. We can now have widget "types" defined via extensions.
• The ability to load widgets from different sources.

I have previously posted about this is this thread : #168 (comment)

I'am currently working on a blog post that explains all those concepts and why they were implemented in aura-express.

[addyosmani]

That sounds great, @sbellity :) I look forward to reading what you write up. Very excited for us to be getting aura-express off the ground and into master.