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Web Starter Kit

developers.google.com

161–170 of 218 posts

Re: Web Starter Kit

#161
post #124
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Browser lock-in? What makes you think web applications made with this kit work only in Chrome?

One of the core values behind this project is that it should work extremely well cross-device and that most definitely means on devices where Chrome isn't the primary browser. During development we've ensured that we test on Firefox OS, Windows phone, iOS and browsers other than Chrome which run on Android. I want to give people something that they can rely on. Chrome isn't the only browser in the world for sure :)

Looks like browsersync is a Chrome only proprietary feature.

Re: Web Starter Kit

#162
post #150

How does this compare to Yeoman, and is it meant to be a replacement? I thought Yeoman was made by some Google folks.

From the documentation: "Web Starter Kit is inspired by Mobile HTML5 Boilerplate and Yeoman's generator-gulp-webapp, having taken input from contributors to both projects during development."

It's not a replacement. My opinion on this as a stakeholder is that is meant for different audience that Yeoman serves. Ultimately we have produced a highly opinionated stack that developers can start with and customize as they like (or not if they don't want to). This lets developers who are experienced quickly start and manipulate it, and lets developers who don't know what a good workflow looks like be set up for success straight away. Yeoman on the other hand gives you complete control over how you want your project to be started and assumes that you know all the answers to the questions the generator poses.

I also like that Web Starter Kit is just a simple download that you can extract and be good to go with.

Re: Web Starter Kit

#163
Just a stupid question ... what is it?

edit: Answered in other people's comments - it's somewhere between HTML5BoilerPlate and Bootstrap - a basic "hello world" bunch of HTML / SASS / js boilerplate code. This one has an emphasis on mobile.

Re: Web Starter Kit

#164
as someone only casually familiar with node and and frontend dev generally, i'm curious about the instructions to install gulp and other things globally instead of local to the project. could someone illuminate the reasoning behind that? my thinking is that you're almost always better off doing things local to the project if possible.

Re: Web Starter Kit

#165
post #15

The web is now hamstrung by the HTML/CSS layout model more than anything else. The hackery required to attempt to imitate native mobile apps is horrific. Google would be better off throwing efforts into a new layout engine leveraging raw JS and WebGL, but with a sane API, than these continuous attempts to push HTML into places where it doesn't work. If they don't lead it I can see someone else doing it in such a way…

On the Chrome team we're always looking at ways to better provide access to lower level primitives and machinery to enable you to do things like this. It's a multi-faceted problem however. If you have specific suggestions around alternative layout engines, discourse.specifiction.org is a great place to lay out your suggestions in more detail (not that HN isn't useful for this, but those interested in standards genera…

To be clear, I think in the medium to long term other than legacy HTML support browsers will get out of the layout engine business. Layout belongs in the JavaScript layer (or similar execution env) on top of a lower level abstraction, which is why I picked out WebGL as the most likely contender. Then the on the wire format becomes pure semantics, which can either be semi standardised, or not. (And Google clearly have an interest in promoting the former).

WebGL, as it stands, seems to lack a few useful primitives for such a task, most notably needing an equivalent to process separated iframes. That might be possible already, but if not I'm sure it will be cracked enormously faster than attempting to debate and implement tiny incremental improvements in the HTML spec.

My understanding is this is remarkably close to how the PS4 UI is actually implemented already.

Re: Web Starter Kit

#166
I guess it makes sense that the only library left to have in Google's web stack was an HTML/CSS framework. So now the circle is complete - you can run a website in Chrome on a Chromebook with a Starter Kit layout (all images as WebP of course) on top of AngularJS, running off a Go backend on App Engine.

Re: Web Starter Kit

#167
post #151
post #132

Is it just me, or do the fonts on that page look terrible on Windows? /edit: looks like it's just "Roboto Condensed"

No it's not just you, it's everyone using chrome windows, it a bug in their rendering engine that has been unfixed for years. There are multiple easy ways to fix this (load order, re-rendering font, server config)..you would think a web starter kit would get the basics of fonts right... The layout is also broken for the icon rows... Example: http://i.imgur.com/8DCIsLw.jpg

Looks like the classes for the icons are way wrong, or they forgot a clear:both; somewhere which makes the rows cascade improperly.

Re: Web Starter Kit

#168

I was really hoping "Delete key friendly" meant that they weren't forcing Chrome to bind delete to the back function any longer.

Removing that has been attempted a few times and failed. I would love to see that shortcut removed myself too. :/

I'm surprised more people don't know about this BackStop extension that does just that: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/backstop/pidcjgldc...

Re: Web Starter Kit

#169
I like this tool in theory, but the inital web site for it sucks...

I was interested in learning about their "Live Browser Reloading" but was unable to learn more about it, as I ended up traveling through a Kafkaesque labyrinth of documentation pages.

Google guys/gals: Please keep working on this, but also make the website more friendly!

Re: Web Starter Kit

#170
This seems crude to me compared to my experiences with jQuery Mobile. This also affirms my belief that custom Android and iPhone development is going to go the way of the dinosaur. It's all about the web.
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