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I'm working on an app that takes this idea a step further. It is a platform that lets people create apps by defining a data schema and UI components to edit and

by jeswin 12y ago

I'm working on an app that takes this idea a step further. It is a platform that lets people create apps by defining a data schema and UI components to edit and display this. Once an app/schema/component is defined, it can be "forked" by others and further customized. Think github not for source code, but live apps[1]. One of the key requirements for this was a way to run untrusted scripts client-side (server-side is somewhat easy), since the platform lets users write arbitrary UI components. React works wonderfully here (in theory); we can isolate the React component in a sandbox (iframe with sandbox attribute set) and copy the Virtual DOM back to the main window after sanitization. Add: The beauty of React is that the developers recognized the limitations of other approaches; components in web apps cannot be solved with a rehash or an improvement on existing ideas. Giving up the usual design patterns and DOM hackery in favor of an esprima-based Javascript parser and serious Math is some creative thinking. 1: Open source, will have an alpha in 3 weeks: https://github.com/jeswin/fora https://github.com/jeswin/fora

NathanKP 12y ago
That is pretty interesting. So using Fora you can jumpstart a new app by defining all your data models, and then select a bunch of components to build a skeleton view that makes use of those models? If so this will be very useful, especially since it sounds like it will allow us devs to spend more time on the business specific logic, and making the interface beautiful, instead of spending lots of time gluing together components and models.
- jeswin 12y ago
  Yup that is what it is. It builds on the notion that many apps are actually forums, with various levels of customization. Flickr, Pinterest, HN and even Amazon and Tiger Direct (TigerDirect will have products, reviews etc as 'posts') are actually forums. So we use the term forums and apps interchangeably. The social aspect is equally important: - There are millions of developers who don't participate in improving apps today because creating and hosting an app isn't a friction-less process. On Fora, if you see an app/forum that fits your needs, click fork, edit some JS+React/JSX in the browser, and you have a new app. - Everybody sees all source code for all apps/forums; so it's great to learn. And then improvements help everybody. Like wikipedia for code. . - Many people know enough JS to tweak stuff. React mostly takes just JS knowledge, so you don't need to know the framework like Angular. Ah, and also isomorphic UI code that runs on the server and browser. Also for all it's issues, one thing JS has going for it is that you can read and edit in a browser. Ah there; I got excited. :)

by jeswin 12y ago

NathanKP 12y ago

That is pretty interesting. So using Fora you can jumpstart a new app by defining all your data models, and then select a bunch of components to build a skeleton view that makes use of those models? If so this will be very useful, especially since it sounds like it will allow us devs to spend more time on the business specific logic, and making the interface beautiful, instead of spending lots of time gluing together components and models.

jeswin 12y ago
Yup that is what it is. It builds on the notion that many apps are actually forums, with various levels of customization. Flickr, Pinterest, HN and even Amazon and Tiger Direct (TigerDirect will have products, reviews etc as 'posts') are actually forums. So we use the term forums and apps interchangeably. The social aspect is equally important: - There are millions of developers who don't participate in improving apps today because creating and hosting an app isn't a friction-less process. On Fora, if you see an app/forum that fits your needs, click fork, edit some JS+React/JSX in the browser, and you have a new app. - Everybody sees all source code for all apps/forums; so it's great to learn. And then improvements help everybody. Like wikipedia for code. . - Many people know enough JS to tweak stuff. React mostly takes just JS knowledge, so you don't need to know the framework like Angular. Ah, and also isomorphic UI code that runs on the server and browser. Also for all it's issues, one thing JS has going for it is that you can read and edit in a browser. Ah there; I got excited. :)