For those interested in the technical aspects of this feature. I'm using phantomjs to create the exports. I tried two other alternatives before committing to it, and both proven less featureful: wkhtmltopdf and http://weasyprint.org/
weasyprint seemed like an awesome project, up to date and with an author ready to respond to issues. But with a default config it failed to render many of the CSS3 attributes used and had to take a safe route.
wkhtmltopdf was a strong competitor, it did some things better than phantomjs even, like the support for page-break- properties. But phantomjs stood out because of its JS api, being able to load a page, change a few classes and attributes in on the spot, and then render it altered.
There are a few things that I couldn't to with any, though. Like rendering a single page for the entire timeline. The page size properties are build for printing, so even though they support px values they don't amount to what you'd expect and they are too unpredictable to render a single page containing exactly to contents of the html document.
Let me know if you have any more questions, about this or the app. Thanks!
Interesting perspective, you're not the first to mention that even though you like it, you don't necesserily see it as a CV. That's why I posted early, to validate the idea and direction. It's a common thing to pivot the market with the same product, after getting feedback from potential users. I'll certaintly think about this some more, thanks!
This is not your typical Meteor project. Almost everything is realtime, but because that's how Meteor works, not because it was a requirement. So yes, mostly I just wanted to try it out. But I can can confirm it can also be used as your everyday web framework, not just for chat servers or what one might imagine it was made for
Not an actual paratrooper, that would've been cool!
Honestly I had to move so fast because it was a side thing and I was doing everything top-bottom (including design) and I might have missed a few things. Haven't even got to test Meteorite. Have you? If so, let me know what you think of it
I should write something more elaborate, but for the sake of not leaving your comment hanging, this is what I can highlight out the back of my head:
- The best thing by far is sharing the same code for both client and server. It is as good as it sounds, at least as far as productivity and having a small codebase goes
- Everybody is worried about security, but they got it covered. For each collection you can filer who can publish/insert/update or delete. Each go through a filter you attach a callback to, where you have the userId at hand and can easily only allow the owner of a document to be able to update or delete it. Or just as easy publish (for read) only the documents that a user owns, for all regular users, and publish all of them for an admin user.
- It takes a while to create an organized structure though, there is a loading order for certain folder names, but basically everything that is in your project will be loaded in the project asynchronously, w/out having any control on the order. This makes it painful when dealing with inheritance, but in the end you get around it using the folder order of loading they provide and using the Meteor.startup callback, where you can assume all files have loaded
- Another thing that I found a bit counter intuitive at first is that everything is template oriented. Usually you have a module of some sort, which loads a template. Here you have a template, which has _code_ attached to it. It's very easy to go the spaghetti-code no-framework JavaScript way. But if you like having control and are able to create a scalable pattern for modules/widgets, it becomes a very powerful tool
Sorry for the ambiguity, but there's a disclaimer at the bottom of the landing page:
> If enough users submit to this, I might eventually seek profit through a side product or feature, in order to create a sustainable environment. That being said, everything that is already offered (and probably more) will always be free. Also, ads will never be an option.
This as well:
> Feel free to reach at contact at aufond.me
The logic behind the navigation was that left means back, so you go back in time. Because the timeline starts with the present and goes in the past. But I can see your point as well, I'll go through this with more people and decide which way is more natural. Thanks
I think I see what you mean, that the benefits should be more clear and more reward-oriented, that it should state what it does for you, instead of just what it does. (period)
Thanks for the insight, trying to make a product or app appealing is something I'm just learning
Hi there, guy who made this here. There's a disclaimer at the bottom of the landing page for general context, but here is the technical side of the story
I took a shot at building something in my spare time (weekends and such), while having a fully engaging full-time job. It spanned over almost 6 months, but there were weeks when I had not even a single commit.
Besides having an idea to believe in, Meteor.js was also a big part of making this happen. It's the first time I'm building anything with it, but after a few weeks of setting the tone and a few small in-house lib files, the productivity of having it all in one place became unbeatable. I could write some more about my experience with Meteor if other people are curious to try it but never had the chance.
Meteor wasn't the only productivity booster though, I used as many out-of-the box services and technologies as possible. Not to mention organizing yourself as if you were in a team is a key ingredient in keeping a project together for so long with so many breaks. I used a private Github repo, but using Bitbucket or other similar tools is just as well
Technologies
- Meteor.js
- CoffeeScript (If you don't hate it you will eventually learn to use it to your advantage)
- Bootstrap (It helped a lot, but I would drop it completely by the time the app could be considered out of the "MVP" state)
- Underscore + Backbone Router (Models wouldn't fit with Meteor, I made something lighter by hand)
- CSS3 (Go for it)
Services
- Rackspace VPS for hosting
- MongoHQ for data storage
- Filepicker.io for image upload and processing
- Mixpanel for stats
Code
- 2068 lines of CoffeeScript (Including comments!)
- 927 lines of LESS CSS (Here too, including comments---Yes,
I add comments to CSS)
- 583 lines of Handlebars HTML
- 73 lines of Bash scripts
Project
- 403 Git commits
- 35 closed Github issues (the ones that made it through the
"MVP" milestone)