Using Meteor as a front-end library

matb33 · on Aug 22, 2013

Thanks for this. I have similar requirements (back-end already provided), which is why it was natural to choose Angular. But with the work done in Meteor 0.6.5 and guides like yours, I would have chosen Meteor.

For those curious as to why I would choose Meteor over Angular: reason #1 is existing familiarity with Meteor, but a close #2 is that I would have to write much less code to accomplish the same things.

ganarajpr · on Aug 22, 2013

I would be very curious to know how the code would be "further" reduced when you move from angular to meteor. Could you elaborate on this point? Are you talking about meteor (backend+frontend ) or just meteor-frontend reducing the code size?

matb33 · on Aug 22, 2013

I almost did an edit to my comment to say "less" instead of "much less". Generally speaking, Meteor is less verbose.

WhitneyLand · on Aug 22, 2013

Did meteor ever fix the big startup delay that makes your app look like a blank screen for 5 seconds when you first browse to it?

matb33 · on Aug 22, 2013

Not sure, but you can time how long it takes to load their site: http://www.meteor.com/

It uses Meteor itself so the framework is sent down the wire and rendered client-side like any other Meteor app.

recuter · on Aug 22, 2013

That is a static page.

matb33 · on Aug 22, 2013

It's built using Meteor, and the page is constructed on the client. You can determine this by right-clicking the page, and selecting "View Source" in most browsers.

If you're having trouble with this, see this guide: http://webdesign.about.com/od/chrome/a/view-source-chrome.ht... as an example.

Once you see the HTML source, scroll to the area where the body tag is found. You'll notice the lack of any static content:

   <body>
   </body>

Or did you mean something else by static page?

recuter · on Aug 22, 2013

I know how to view-source, thankyouverymuch. All I saw in my network panel is calls to analytics scripts, it appears I was mistaken. (Unlike a simple view-source, the inspector shows the rendered DOM)

Odd way to go about hosting a static page. :0)

matb33 · on Aug 22, 2013

Ah perhaps you mean static content then. I agree it is an odd choice for hosting static content (I'd go the static site generator route myself), but in the case of Meteor's website, I don't blame them for eating their own dog food. It helps to validate (and even test) the framework on a highly-trafficked site.

cell303 · on Aug 22, 2013

Isn't there the spark rendering engine that can be used independent of meteor? https://github.com/meteor/meteor/wiki/Spark

I haven't tried it, but it seems like cleaner approach than cutting the patient in half.

matb33 · on Aug 22, 2013

The recent release of 0.6.5 intends to make it possible to take only the parts of Meteor you need while still benefiting from the surrounding ecosystem (i.e. leveraging smart packages like minimongo, deps, and third-party ones like ironrouter).

In practice though, I wasn't able to get a client-side only Meteor example app running, so I'm waiting for Meteor to iron out the rough spots.

In the meantime, techniques such as the one by the blog post author can tide people over.

alexfringes · on Aug 22, 2013

Very interesting. I will give this a try. I've been a fan of Meteor for a while and have worked with both Ember and Angular. I usually end up longing for certain aspects of Meteor in both of those frameworks.

erkose · on Aug 22, 2013

Meteor looked interesting until I discovered it's dependent on node v.0.8.25 :(