5 ms·

Hey guys - project creator here. Would love to get any and all feedback - this project has been my passion for over a year and I'm super excited to finally rele

by jenius 14y ago

Hey guys - project creator here. Would love to get any and all feedback - this project has been my passion for over a year and I'm super excited to finally release it! Also, this website is open source in addition to the project. It's here on github: https://github.com/jenius/roots.cx https://github.com/jenius/roots.cx

JungleGymSam 14y ago
In that case please consider redoing your videos with more care. Both the audio and video are poor. Your microphone should be near your mouth so that you don't sound like you're far away and the video resolution is really low.
- jenius 14y ago
  I know, I definitely need to do a better job with the videos. I just did them this morning (wasn't planning on having them but i thought it might be a good idea) and vimeo really murdered me on the resolution, not sure why. I'll have new ones up soon, promise : )
- raimondious 14y ago
  Not to mention being able to hear every single tap click and movement on the laptop is really distracting. However everything else looks pretty slick!
msutherl 14y ago
Really great job, excited to try this out. Are there any other similar projects out there (aside from Yeomen)?
- jenius 14y ago
  middleman (http://middlemanapp.com/ http://middlemanapp.com/) is a solid alternative for ruby as well - this is the only other one i know of apart from yeoman as you mentioned
- jrmoran 14y ago
  There are a few http://mimosajs.com/ http://mimosajs.com/ http://brunch.io/ http://brunch.io/ ---- On a related note, I'm currently using Grunt.JS with few plugins for Compass, CoffeeScript and Live Reload. Similar to Guards (ruby based), it's the plugin ecosystem that makes it valuable and able to suit multiple needs. Needless to say, roots sounds interesting.
  - msutherl 14y ago
    Thanks! Mimosa seems less opinionated, supports everything. Has modules. Ugly website. Brunch seems less opinionated, supports everything. Has skeletons, plugin API. Nice website. Grunt seems like the roll-your-own option and is probably more well supported than the others...?
    - dbashford 14y ago
      Mimosa author here! I'll work on the website. =) I do think the tool is better documented than some of the others, and I was really going for having the docs rather than making them super pretty. Mimosa is very pluggable (http://mimosajs.com/modules.html http://mimosajs.com/modules.html), moreso than Brunch, but slightly less so than grunt, though, to be honest, my grunt experience is slim. That said, grunt obviously has quite the ecosystem of plugins that all the others lack.
      - msutherl 14y ago
        Hey, sorry about dissing your site. It's not that bad and could be tuned up quite easily. – The text shadows on the main page are a bit much. 1px offset is sufficient and the shadow color probably doesn't need to be so light. – Grey boxes around text are too tight and probably shouldn't be so rounded. – Headers on home-page are either too big or aren't given enough space. Whitespace! Don't be afraid to use it. – Darker shadows on headers have the same problem – too much offset – just looks tacky. – Title and description on homepage looks crammed into the top. Give it more space. Maybe smaller text. – Red headers are way too bright. Tone it down. – The bathroom-tile background image is kind of weird. – Body text is too wide throughout the docs. – More whitespace throughout the design would help (between all typographic elements), especially given your choice of a large, open typeface.
roxxor 14y ago
Cool project. Also, you should checkout Punch (http://laktek.github.com/punch http://laktek.github.com/punch). I like it mainly for the JSON based content definitions, which is really helpful when it comes to prototyping web apps.
- jenius 14y ago
  this looks really cool, thanks for sharing! i'm definitely going to check it out and pick it apart : )
alexcabrera 14y ago
This is really nice and a great way to rapidly build without resorting to templates or bootstrap. Highly polished, great work. We released something built on the same stack (jade, stylus, coffeescript) that's a bit more lightweight, more geared towards building prototypes called [proto](https://github.com/droptype/proto https://github.com/droptype/proto). Because it's focused on building small prototypes, it saves everything to gists and provides a viewer at http://proto.es/{gist-id} http://proto.es/{gist-id}.
- jenius 14y ago
  Thanks so much! I really appreciate it. Proto looks like top quality stuff - excellent work. I'm going to check this out in depth - perhaps our tools can learn something from each other or combine in some way : )
  - alexcabrera 14y ago
    That would be fantastic. As I said, root is very highly polished and you've done a great job. We have something in the pipeline that might make sense to collaborate on. Will shoot you an email to discuss.
    - jenius 14y ago
      Awesome, thanks. Got your email, will be in touch shortly!
jjoe 14y ago
Congratulations on releasing this. I think you meant to say sftp instead of ftp.
- jenius 14y ago
  Do you mean on possibly future deploy to ftp implementation? There's a pretty long story behind that one too - ftp is brutal to work with.
  - jjoe 14y ago
    Sorry for being unclear. On the video you recommended using ftp to transfer the pub folder over to the web server for go live. It's best to recommend a tool that operates on an encrypted ssh transport like sftp/scp/etc. Regards
eranation 14y ago
Very exciting, it's hard to keep up with all the moving parts nowadays, I like it. Reminds me of rails composer a little. as for feedback: * would love it if you'll add TypeScript support somehow. I come from the Java / Scala world and it will be an easier transition to node dev this way * best download to launch-in-browser sequence Iv'e seen yet. (roots create foo, cd foo, roots watch) browser actually opens for you, nice touch. * you seem to put a lot of effort on usability and convenience, please continue. * good documentation and usage print-outs * the js client side package manager is a great addition, any dependency management there?
- jenius 14y ago
  Thanks for the feedback, and so glad you like it! I made a plugin interface just for things like adding typescript support. I know pretty much nothing about typescript through, are there any good node compilers out there? It would be incredible if you made a plugin for it - if not I'd be happy to try to tinker one together myself.
  - eranation 14y ago
    Yep npm install -g typescript tsc helloworld.ts More info here: http://www.typescriptlang.org http://www.typescriptlang.org Will give it a shot :) p.s. I would add a tweet button on the site, I actively looked for it, although I'm lazy I tweeted anyway, but this might give you some extra shout-outs, especially for the shot grace period you are on HN front page
    - jenius 14y ago
      Thanks! I'll check it out. Feel free to ping me on twitter if you're having trouble or want me to put one together - http://twitter.com/jescalan http://twitter.com/jescalan
- jitl 14y ago
  It looks like roots is using Bower to manage client-side packages. Bower is Twitter's "front-end JavaScript" package manager. Bower does indeed manage and track dependencies for you, see http://twitter.github.com/bower/ http://twitter.github.com/bower/

by jenius 14y ago

JungleGymSam 14y ago

In that case please consider redoing your videos with more care. Both the audio and video are poor. Your microphone should be near your mouth so that you don't sound like you're far away and the video resolution is really low.

jenius 14y ago
I know, I definitely need to do a better job with the videos. I just did them this morning (wasn't planning on having them but i thought it might be a good idea) and vimeo really murdered me on the resolution, not sure why. I'll have new ones up soon, promise : )
raimondious 14y ago
Not to mention being able to hear every single tap click and movement on the laptop is really distracting. However everything else looks pretty slick!

msutherl 14y ago

Really great job, excited to try this out. Are there any other similar projects out there (aside from Yeomen)?

jenius 14y ago
middleman (http://middlemanapp.com/ http://middlemanapp.com/) is a solid alternative for ruby as well - this is the only other one i know of apart from yeoman as you mentioned
jrmoran 14y ago
There are a few http://mimosajs.com/ http://mimosajs.com/ http://brunch.io/ http://brunch.io/ ---- On a related note, I'm currently using Grunt.JS with few plugins for Compass, CoffeeScript and Live Reload. Similar to Guards (ruby based), it's the plugin ecosystem that makes it valuable and able to suit multiple needs. Needless to say, roots sounds interesting.
- msutherl 14y ago
  Thanks! Mimosa seems less opinionated, supports everything. Has modules. Ugly website. Brunch seems less opinionated, supports everything. Has skeletons, plugin API. Nice website. Grunt seems like the roll-your-own option and is probably more well supported than the others...?
  - dbashford 14y ago
    Mimosa author here! I'll work on the website. =) I do think the tool is better documented than some of the others, and I was really going for having the docs rather than making them super pretty. Mimosa is very pluggable (http://mimosajs.com/modules.html http://mimosajs.com/modules.html), moreso than Brunch, but slightly less so than grunt, though, to be honest, my grunt experience is slim. That said, grunt obviously has quite the ecosystem of plugins that all the others lack.
    - msutherl 14y ago
      Hey, sorry about dissing your site. It's not that bad and could be tuned up quite easily. – The text shadows on the main page are a bit much. 1px offset is sufficient and the shadow color probably doesn't need to be so light. – Grey boxes around text are too tight and probably shouldn't be so rounded. – Headers on home-page are either too big or aren't given enough space. Whitespace! Don't be afraid to use it. – Darker shadows on headers have the same problem – too much offset – just looks tacky. – Title and description on homepage looks crammed into the top. Give it more space. Maybe smaller text. – Red headers are way too bright. Tone it down. – The bathroom-tile background image is kind of weird. – Body text is too wide throughout the docs. – More whitespace throughout the design would help (between all typographic elements), especially given your choice of a large, open typeface.

roxxor 14y ago

Cool project. Also, you should checkout Punch (http://laktek.github.com/punch http://laktek.github.com/punch). I like it mainly for the JSON based content definitions, which is really helpful when it comes to prototyping web apps.

jenius 14y ago
this looks really cool, thanks for sharing! i'm definitely going to check it out and pick it apart : )

alexcabrera 14y ago

This is really nice and a great way to rapidly build without resorting to templates or bootstrap. Highly polished, great work. We released something built on the same stack (jade, stylus, coffeescript) that's a bit more lightweight, more geared towards building prototypes called [proto](https://github.com/droptype/proto https://github.com/droptype/proto). Because it's focused on building small prototypes, it saves everything to gists and provides a viewer at http://proto.es/{gist-id} http://proto.es/{gist-id}.

jenius 14y ago
Thanks so much! I really appreciate it. Proto looks like top quality stuff - excellent work. I'm going to check this out in depth - perhaps our tools can learn something from each other or combine in some way : )
- alexcabrera 14y ago
  That would be fantastic. As I said, root is very highly polished and you've done a great job. We have something in the pipeline that might make sense to collaborate on. Will shoot you an email to discuss.
  - jenius 14y ago
    Awesome, thanks. Got your email, will be in touch shortly!

jjoe 14y ago

Congratulations on releasing this. I think you meant to say sftp instead of ftp.

jenius 14y ago
Do you mean on possibly future deploy to ftp implementation? There's a pretty long story behind that one too - ftp is brutal to work with.
- jjoe 14y ago
  Sorry for being unclear. On the video you recommended using ftp to transfer the pub folder over to the web server for go live. It's best to recommend a tool that operates on an encrypted ssh transport like sftp/scp/etc. Regards

eranation 14y ago

Very exciting, it's hard to keep up with all the moving parts nowadays, I like it. Reminds me of rails composer a little. as for feedback: * would love it if you'll add TypeScript support somehow. I come from the Java / Scala world and it will be an easier transition to node dev this way * best download to launch-in-browser sequence Iv'e seen yet. (roots create foo, cd foo, roots watch) browser actually opens for you, nice touch. * you seem to put a lot of effort on usability and convenience, please continue. * good documentation and usage print-outs * the js client side package manager is a great addition, any dependency management there?

jenius 14y ago
Thanks for the feedback, and so glad you like it! I made a plugin interface just for things like adding typescript support. I know pretty much nothing about typescript through, are there any good node compilers out there? It would be incredible if you made a plugin for it - if not I'd be happy to try to tinker one together myself.
- eranation 14y ago
  Yep npm install -g typescript tsc helloworld.ts More info here: http://www.typescriptlang.org http://www.typescriptlang.org Will give it a shot :) p.s. I would add a tweet button on the site, I actively looked for it, although I'm lazy I tweeted anyway, but this might give you some extra shout-outs, especially for the shot grace period you are on HN front page
  - jenius 14y ago
    Thanks! I'll check it out. Feel free to ping me on twitter if you're having trouble or want me to put one together - http://twitter.com/jescalan http://twitter.com/jescalan
jitl 14y ago
It looks like roots is using Bower to manage client-side packages. Bower is Twitter's "front-end JavaScript" package manager. Bower does indeed manage and track dependencies for you, see http://twitter.github.com/bower/ http://twitter.github.com/bower/