8 ms·

Mavo – A new, approachable way to create Web applications

139 points by techbubble 9y ago

kkirsche 9y ago
Reminds me of AngularJS 1.x
- desireco42 9y ago
  A little bit, yes, but I feel that they are at least on to something here.
  - fazkan 9y ago
    Seriously what is new here would love to know...
- bolololo1 9y ago
  Look like Angular 1 to me as well. Anyway the idea is nice!
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  I don't recall Angular 1.x having a shared local/remote persistent storage API with built-in local and remote drivers and a storage driver SPI. There's considera le feature differences in the simple templating functionality of this vs. AngularJS 1.x, as well (Angular seems a bit more powerful overall, but this seems to make some of the common things simpler), but I think it's the storage integration which is more of a fundamental difference.
throwaway2016a 9y ago
I'm slightly confused... this seems like a cross between WebComponents and a very simple template language. With a bunch of pre-built components. It's a neat idea but I feel like I'm missing something. Which part if the approach is "new" here? I'm not criticizing, I honestly feel like I must be missing something and would like to know what.
teniutza 9y ago
Additional information can be found at https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2017/05/introducing-mavo/ https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2017/05/introducing-mavo/ and http://lea.verou.me/2017/05/introducing-mavo-create-web-apps-entirely-by-writing-html/ http://lea.verou.me/2017/05/introducing-mavo-create-web-apps... .
proyb2 9y ago
There isn't a tutorial on how to save data or layout, there someone mentioned REST.
- RubenSandwich 9y ago
  There is, it's contained here: https://mavo.io/docs/storage/ https://mavo.io/docs/storage/. Note: Not on the team, just searched the docs.
bshimmin 9y ago
without a single line of programming code A bold statement that doesn't really seem to be supported by: <p property="name" mv-default="[readable(to(filename(image), '.'))]"></p>
- extra88 9y ago
  I assumed the claim was based on differentiating a markup language from programming languages. HTML (and CSS) is code, but not programming code.
  - avaer 9y ago
    I see what you're saying, but that looks like a function call embedded in the HTML. Embedding your programming into HTML doesn't make it any less programming. Otherwise, you could say web programming doesn't exist since it's all just HTML script tags.
    - extra88 9y ago
      Hmm, yes, the readable() value does look like a function call with the sort of unforgiving, indecipherable syntax that can give a non-programmer trouble when they have to do more than paste a sample (e.g. actually enter a filename, including the path). That blurs the "programming" line more.
- leaverou 9y ago
  Spreadsheets have function calls as well, and yet non-programmers can use them. We don't care about making a theoretically pure distinction, we care about making something that non-programmers can actually use.
  - Piskvorrr 9y ago
    ...by abusing existing terminology in confusing ways, clouding the issue. Exactly like http://catb.org/jargon/html/E/English.html http://catb.org/jargon/html/E/English.html , named just so marketing team could claim "You can program our computers in English!"
desireco42 9y ago
I don't understand why there is such negativity about this. They state it is not perfect and it is work in progress near the bottom of intro. What I like about this, is that it allows quickly to make simpler sites that can be edited. I don't want to program upload images ever again, or edit fields. Why do this?! Anyhow, storage seems to be confusing some of you, they explain/document that here http://mavo.io/docs/storage/ http://mavo.io/docs/storage/ I think this is neat idea and we really need to innovate and move past coding crud apps all the time. Developer bootcamps are proof we are not doing anything new.
- throwaway2016a 9y ago
  > I don't understand why there is such negativity about this. I'm not sure I'm reading the same comments as you. None of the ones I read seem overtly negative. Mine is the closest to negative and I explicitly said that I'm just trying to understand not criticize. You may be reading into them too much. For example, the person saying it is like Angular 1.0 could be negative or very positive depending on your view of Angular. Edit: I take that back. The one about "not a single line of code" is actually more negative than mine. Although it also happens to be true. That is code.
  - desireco42 9y ago
    They are negative, that doesn't make you a bad person. All good.
  - extra88 9y ago
    "without a single line of programming code," the adjective is important.
- monkmartinez 9y ago
  It is neat for sure, so are using appventor (blocks to build android apps)[1] and other shortcuts to build websites and apps. The problem is that it says simple, while talking about Git for goodness sakes; commit permissions and such. It says no code. I disagree... you need to know HTML basics to even comprehend the Mavo way. Why not just make a vanilla HTML page if that is all you need? HTML is not hard... and how is this moving us past CRUD?
speps 9y ago
It seems to be missing simple authentication. I really like how Azure Web Apps[0] do it for example. Then you could use that to authenticate with some external storage. The idea of websites being just a way to access and modify data that you own entirely (private Git or else) is really neat. EDIT: actually they do handle authentication but it's GitHub only. Also they seem to support REST APIs (from a custom backend) but no demos or example of that. [0] https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-app-service-authentication-authorization/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-app-servic...
- mgiannopoulos 9y ago
  Dropbox is supported as well. https://mavo.io/docs/storage/ https://mavo.io/docs/storage/
  - kawera 9y ago
    And Firebase too: https://plugins.mavo.io/plugin/firebase https://plugins.mavo.io/plugin/firebase
redtuesday 9y ago
Seems like it could be used for the same purpose as NetlifyCms.
coltonv 9y ago
After working with React/Inferno and some of the other virtual dom frameworks, I simply can never go back to templating languages baked into HTML. While this seems like a nice idea, I don't think I could use it for that reason. It's incredibly limiting to try to write your code into HTML with a small programming language built in. You spend more time fighting the embedded language then making content.
- choward 9y ago
  Also, you lose all type information when your template language is its own special language.
WhiteOwlLion 9y ago
I could see this being useful for individual or small businesses that don't have a tech savvy or IT staff. The business pays a web designer to set up the site. The content can then get updated over time. WordPress sometimes is overkill and something simpler is definitely a plus.
- monkmartinez 9y ago
  Might as well just use vanilla HTML, CSS and JS... no?
  - leaverou 9y ago
    That cannot be updated by the non-technical people in the company.
    - Piskvorrr 9y ago
      And your examples are somehow better readable to "non-tech...company"? How? Better, as compared to...oh wait, not compared to anything, tested on a sample of 20 people. Passing that off as "This is not wishful thinking; it’s published, peer-reviewed research" (your front page) is dishonest at best. And it gets better. Those people in the study were recruited at "local web design meetup groups". Non-technical? How's that for selection bias? It seems just like Angular to me - and worse, buggy Angular: how does "Born on time property="birthday" datetime="2014-06-01" 1 Jun 2014 /time" get transformed into "Adam Catlace Born on 1 May 2014"? ( http://mavo.io/docs/primer/ http://mavo.io/docs/primer/ , current Google Chrome, version 58, no extensions, no weird timezone one month behind the rest of the world) The language does seem nice for the tasks at hand, and the learning curve looks shallow, but you are overhyping it way too much ("no programming", "better readable").
      - WhiteOwlLion 9y ago
        Sometimes I think a static CMS like Lektor may be a better framework to set up. The static nature prevents any of the dynamic exploits but still maintain templating system without adding complexity after the initial setup. https://www.futurehosting.com/blog/lektor-is-a-static-site-generator-that-can-be-used-by-non-developers/ https://www.futurehosting.com/blog/lektor-is-a-static-site-g...
RubenSandwich 9y ago
Congratulations Lea Verou and MIT CSAIL! I'm curious about if you've done any research with this experiment yet and if so where can I find it? I'm very curious on ways to make programming more friendly/approachable, but I have found very little research that even begins to examine what a friendly/approachable programming language would even look like.
- leaverou 9y ago
  Yup, we have! Here's the paper: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2984551 http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2984551 and here's an open version: http://people.csail.mit.edu/karger/Papers/mavo.pdf http://people.csail.mit.edu/karger/Papers/mavo.pdf Look at the References and you'll find more :) There's a whole area of research about end-user programming, though it doesn't usually involve languages, but more GUIs.
  - RubenSandwich 9y ago
    Thanks so much. Yeah, I was specifically looking for research related to programming languages, but I'll give it a look. Good luck! Thanks for putting this out and helping slowly chip at the divide between consumers and creators in computing today.
  - canada_dry 9y ago
    Well done! This has great potential to democratize the building of simple website applications for the masses. Great concept so far!
equalunique 9y ago
Open this in IE 11 and scroll below "A new, approachable way to create Web applications" - prepare to laugh!
- leaverou 9y ago
  IE 11 is a dead browser. Development stopped 3 years ago. There will never be an IE 12, it's just Edge now (which Mavo works in just fine).
  - leeoniya 9y ago
    it really depends on your audience. i can tell you that ie11 is alive and well with our customers (ecommerce, home remodeling)
- joemaffei 9y ago
  Same problem on the in-app browser in Boreal (the iOS Hacker News reader I'm using).
canada_dry 9y ago
When this becomes easily available to use along with redhat's rhcloud or heroku (vs. github pages) this will be an amazing solution!
CM30 9y ago
Probably an odd question, but am I the only one who thinks this would have been a godsend about 10-20 years ago? I mean, it's useful for some cases now (like as mentioned, non programmers wanting to make more dynamic sites), but back then a lot of cheap/free hosting services didn't support any server side scripting. Something like this would have let you build an ad hoc CMS on a free hosting service like Geocities. Which would have been pretty useful for the utterly skint. Now though? It's still useful for some people, and I do think it's something I'll test myself at one point, but I feel the easy access to free/cheap hosting for server side scripts has likely cut down on its usefulness a fair bit.
- avsaro 9y ago
  I am not sure but I think it is fair to say something like that would not be possible with speed of javascript engines of 10-20 years ago.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    Also, neither the local nor remote storage providers it uses were available 10 years ago.
felipeccastro 9y ago
This is a very interesting project, and all attempts to simplify web development at this point are more than welcome. However I really wouldn't call it "a new way to create Web Applications". With such an ambitious title, no wonder folks here are thinking it's on the same category of libraries like Angular. It looks like a great tool for non-programmers and power-users creating simple CMS kind of sites, which is already a great deal. However, typical Web applications are much more complex than what this tool could possibly do, so I would recommend to reconsider that message. Javascript, servers and databases are not the assembly of the web, there's good reason for their existence and in slightly more complex scenarios they simply can't be abstracted away. It's not just about the message, it's about settling on a specific audience, and with that, focusing the efforts to provide as much value as possible for them. Trying to stay on the middle term for any generic "web applications" might mean the tool will never be flexible enough for professional web apps nor feature complete enough for non-programmers use cases.
chrisjamesc 9y ago
This kind of work shows a great direction for the future of web development. It's true that the HN community might be more incline to programming than others, however this library makes building web pages user friendly while still keeping it close to the language. Also, huge props to Lea Verou who's been notable at working on improving the web and CSS!

139 points by techbubble 9y ago

kkirsche 9y ago

Reminds me of AngularJS 1.x

desireco42 9y ago
A little bit, yes, but I feel that they are at least on to something here.
- fazkan 9y ago
  Seriously what is new here would love to know...
bolololo1 9y ago
Look like Angular 1 to me as well. Anyway the idea is nice!
dragonwriter 9y ago
I don't recall Angular 1.x having a shared local/remote persistent storage API with built-in local and remote drivers and a storage driver SPI. There's considera le feature differences in the simple templating functionality of this vs. AngularJS 1.x, as well (Angular seems a bit more powerful overall, but this seems to make some of the common things simpler), but I think it's the storage integration which is more of a fundamental difference.

throwaway2016a 9y ago

I'm slightly confused... this seems like a cross between WebComponents and a very simple template language. With a bunch of pre-built components. It's a neat idea but I feel like I'm missing something. Which part if the approach is "new" here? I'm not criticizing, I honestly feel like I must be missing something and would like to know what.

teniutza 9y ago

Additional information can be found at https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2017/05/introducing-mavo/ https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2017/05/introducing-mavo/ and http://lea.verou.me/2017/05/introducing-mavo-create-web-apps-entirely-by-writing-html/ http://lea.verou.me/2017/05/introducing-mavo-create-web-apps... .

proyb2 9y ago

There isn't a tutorial on how to save data or layout, there someone mentioned REST.

RubenSandwich 9y ago
There is, it's contained here: https://mavo.io/docs/storage/ https://mavo.io/docs/storage/. Note: Not on the team, just searched the docs.

bshimmin 9y ago

without a single line of programming code A bold statement that doesn't really seem to be supported by: <p property="name" mv-default="[readable(to(filename(image), '.'))]"></p>

extra88 9y ago
I assumed the claim was based on differentiating a markup language from programming languages. HTML (and CSS) is code, but not programming code.
- avaer 9y ago
  I see what you're saying, but that looks like a function call embedded in the HTML. Embedding your programming into HTML doesn't make it any less programming. Otherwise, you could say web programming doesn't exist since it's all just HTML script tags.
  - extra88 9y ago
    Hmm, yes, the readable() value does look like a function call with the sort of unforgiving, indecipherable syntax that can give a non-programmer trouble when they have to do more than paste a sample (e.g. actually enter a filename, including the path). That blurs the "programming" line more.
leaverou 9y ago
Spreadsheets have function calls as well, and yet non-programmers can use them. We don't care about making a theoretically pure distinction, we care about making something that non-programmers can actually use.
- Piskvorrr 9y ago
  ...by abusing existing terminology in confusing ways, clouding the issue. Exactly like http://catb.org/jargon/html/E/English.html http://catb.org/jargon/html/E/English.html , named just so marketing team could claim "You can program our computers in English!"

desireco42 9y ago

I don't understand why there is such negativity about this. They state it is not perfect and it is work in progress near the bottom of intro. What I like about this, is that it allows quickly to make simpler sites that can be edited. I don't want to program upload images ever again, or edit fields. Why do this?! Anyhow, storage seems to be confusing some of you, they explain/document that here http://mavo.io/docs/storage/ http://mavo.io/docs/storage/ I think this is neat idea and we really need to innovate and move past coding crud apps all the time. Developer bootcamps are proof we are not doing anything new.

throwaway2016a 9y ago
> I don't understand why there is such negativity about this. I'm not sure I'm reading the same comments as you. None of the ones I read seem overtly negative. Mine is the closest to negative and I explicitly said that I'm just trying to understand not criticize. You may be reading into them too much. For example, the person saying it is like Angular 1.0 could be negative or very positive depending on your view of Angular. Edit: I take that back. The one about "not a single line of code" is actually more negative than mine. Although it also happens to be true. That is code.
- desireco42 9y ago
  They are negative, that doesn't make you a bad person. All good.
- extra88 9y ago
  "without a single line of programming code," the adjective is important.
monkmartinez 9y ago
It is neat for sure, so are using appventor (blocks to build android apps)[1] and other shortcuts to build websites and apps. The problem is that it says simple, while talking about Git for goodness sakes; commit permissions and such. It says no code. I disagree... you need to know HTML basics to even comprehend the Mavo way. Why not just make a vanilla HTML page if that is all you need? HTML is not hard... and how is this moving us past CRUD?

speps 9y ago

It seems to be missing simple authentication. I really like how Azure Web Apps[0] do it for example. Then you could use that to authenticate with some external storage. The idea of websites being just a way to access and modify data that you own entirely (private Git or else) is really neat. EDIT: actually they do handle authentication but it's GitHub only. Also they seem to support REST APIs (from a custom backend) but no demos or example of that. [0] https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-app-service-authentication-authorization/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-app-servic...

mgiannopoulos 9y ago
Dropbox is supported as well. https://mavo.io/docs/storage/ https://mavo.io/docs/storage/
- kawera 9y ago
  And Firebase too: https://plugins.mavo.io/plugin/firebase https://plugins.mavo.io/plugin/firebase

redtuesday 9y ago

Seems like it could be used for the same purpose as NetlifyCms.

coltonv 9y ago

After working with React/Inferno and some of the other virtual dom frameworks, I simply can never go back to templating languages baked into HTML. While this seems like a nice idea, I don't think I could use it for that reason. It's incredibly limiting to try to write your code into HTML with a small programming language built in. You spend more time fighting the embedded language then making content.

choward 9y ago
Also, you lose all type information when your template language is its own special language.

WhiteOwlLion 9y ago

I could see this being useful for individual or small businesses that don't have a tech savvy or IT staff. The business pays a web designer to set up the site. The content can then get updated over time. WordPress sometimes is overkill and something simpler is definitely a plus.

monkmartinez 9y ago
Might as well just use vanilla HTML, CSS and JS... no?
- leaverou 9y ago
  That cannot be updated by the non-technical people in the company.
  - Piskvorrr 9y ago
    And your examples are somehow better readable to "non-tech...company"? How? Better, as compared to...oh wait, not compared to anything, tested on a sample of 20 people. Passing that off as "This is not wishful thinking; it’s published, peer-reviewed research" (your front page) is dishonest at best. And it gets better. Those people in the study were recruited at "local web design meetup groups". Non-technical? How's that for selection bias? It seems just like Angular to me - and worse, buggy Angular: how does "Born on time property="birthday" datetime="2014-06-01" 1 Jun 2014 /time" get transformed into "Adam Catlace Born on 1 May 2014"? ( http://mavo.io/docs/primer/ http://mavo.io/docs/primer/ , current Google Chrome, version 58, no extensions, no weird timezone one month behind the rest of the world) The language does seem nice for the tasks at hand, and the learning curve looks shallow, but you are overhyping it way too much ("no programming", "better readable").
    - WhiteOwlLion 9y ago
      Sometimes I think a static CMS like Lektor may be a better framework to set up. The static nature prevents any of the dynamic exploits but still maintain templating system without adding complexity after the initial setup. https://www.futurehosting.com/blog/lektor-is-a-static-site-generator-that-can-be-used-by-non-developers/ https://www.futurehosting.com/blog/lektor-is-a-static-site-g...

RubenSandwich 9y ago

Congratulations Lea Verou and MIT CSAIL! I'm curious about if you've done any research with this experiment yet and if so where can I find it? I'm very curious on ways to make programming more friendly/approachable, but I have found very little research that even begins to examine what a friendly/approachable programming language would even look like.

leaverou 9y ago
Yup, we have! Here's the paper: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2984551 http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2984551 and here's an open version: http://people.csail.mit.edu/karger/Papers/mavo.pdf http://people.csail.mit.edu/karger/Papers/mavo.pdf Look at the References and you'll find more :) There's a whole area of research about end-user programming, though it doesn't usually involve languages, but more GUIs.
- RubenSandwich 9y ago
  Thanks so much. Yeah, I was specifically looking for research related to programming languages, but I'll give it a look. Good luck! Thanks for putting this out and helping slowly chip at the divide between consumers and creators in computing today.
- canada_dry 9y ago
  Well done! This has great potential to democratize the building of simple website applications for the masses. Great concept so far!

equalunique 9y ago

Open this in IE 11 and scroll below "A new, approachable way to create Web applications" - prepare to laugh!

leaverou 9y ago
IE 11 is a dead browser. Development stopped 3 years ago. There will never be an IE 12, it's just Edge now (which Mavo works in just fine).
- leeoniya 9y ago
  it really depends on your audience. i can tell you that ie11 is alive and well with our customers (ecommerce, home remodeling)
joemaffei 9y ago
Same problem on the in-app browser in Boreal (the iOS Hacker News reader I'm using).

canada_dry 9y ago

When this becomes easily available to use along with redhat's rhcloud or heroku (vs. github pages) this will be an amazing solution!

CM30 9y ago

Probably an odd question, but am I the only one who thinks this would have been a godsend about 10-20 years ago? I mean, it's useful for some cases now (like as mentioned, non programmers wanting to make more dynamic sites), but back then a lot of cheap/free hosting services didn't support any server side scripting. Something like this would have let you build an ad hoc CMS on a free hosting service like Geocities. Which would have been pretty useful for the utterly skint. Now though? It's still useful for some people, and I do think it's something I'll test myself at one point, but I feel the easy access to free/cheap hosting for server side scripts has likely cut down on its usefulness a fair bit.

avsaro 9y ago
I am not sure but I think it is fair to say something like that would not be possible with speed of javascript engines of 10-20 years ago.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  Also, neither the local nor remote storage providers it uses were available 10 years ago.

felipeccastro 9y ago

This is a very interesting project, and all attempts to simplify web development at this point are more than welcome. However I really wouldn't call it "a new way to create Web Applications". With such an ambitious title, no wonder folks here are thinking it's on the same category of libraries like Angular. It looks like a great tool for non-programmers and power-users creating simple CMS kind of sites, which is already a great deal. However, typical Web applications are much more complex than what this tool could possibly do, so I would recommend to reconsider that message. Javascript, servers and databases are not the assembly of the web, there's good reason for their existence and in slightly more complex scenarios they simply can't be abstracted away. It's not just about the message, it's about settling on a specific audience, and with that, focusing the efforts to provide as much value as possible for them. Trying to stay on the middle term for any generic "web applications" might mean the tool will never be flexible enough for professional web apps nor feature complete enough for non-programmers use cases.

chrisjamesc 9y ago

This kind of work shows a great direction for the future of web development. It's true that the HN community might be more incline to programming than others, however this library makes building web pages user friendly while still keeping it close to the language. Also, huge props to Lea Verou who's been notable at working on improving the web and CSS!