Desc

We currently have a platform module in the core crate, the serde methods only belong to the target platform, they should not be written in the core crate.

Solutions

Implement serde to the widget wrappers of the target platforms, remove this trait, or abstract a new one.

Desc

Elvis currently compiles examples into epm for initializing projects as possible as it could be, but it is...stupid in some way.

Solution

The source code is here:

https://github.com/elvisjs/elvis/blob/d8f2aea23009676e089d8ba3c2f72c4993a45561/crates/epm/build.rs#L10

We can use git clone instead of compiling them.

Desc

The WebSocket warp offers is no good, big size and hard to use, wrap an HTTP server and a WebSocket server ourselves next days

Desc

https://elvisjs.github.io/the-elvis-book/ crashed.

Desc

The default event listener of wasm-bindgen is hard to use, the code of gloo is simple, migrate it into elvis-web.

Week 2

Launch Date

2020-08-11

Product Changes

Added the SSR system to the development server, and gesture system to our library.

Overall Status

Refactor the project structure of ElvisJS

The ElvisJS widget tree is only designed for browser currently, in the previous version, there is a lot of hard code about HTML string in the core crate, now we migrated all of them into the web crate.

Examples

• Click Button Example
• Router Example

Cooperation

We got a chance of cooperating with two artists to write an online gallery for them, crypto art.

What is your goal for next week?

The TODO MVC Example

What issues/questions do you have?

What is the correct time of promoting our library?

We are considering promoting our library after we completed the TODO MVC example, but ElvisJS is not a real UI library at that time, because we only have few components.

But if we don't promote our library after that, will we miss something?

Do we really need to implement a new product by our library ourselves?

I think we have to, but ElvisJS is already a big project, cooperating with others or implement an awesome new product by ElvisJS, which should go first?

Desc

Need to decide what components we will implement for this first stage, second, and a long term plan...

Refs

• React-Material
• Flutter widdget Index

Desc

This router is mainly for the development server, some production usages also.

Desc

rustcc is the biggest rust community in China, we can write a client for it in ElvisJS

Desc

The old state machine is implemented in the javascript side which we currently suspend developing, need a implementation in the rust source code.

Week-5

Product Changes

Describe, if any, product changes made this week. Did you add, iterate, or remove product features this week?

We optimize the syntax of our library...again.

• CSS will output on demand, if you don't write a specified a style in rust, it will not output to the style tag of your APP.
• We improved the coupling of our widgets and their styles, optimize the chain style syntax.

Overall Status

What did you accomplish this week?

We've been stuck into the TODO MVC example for two weeks(week-3 && week-4)...maybe it will take the week-5.

We've already completed the UI of the TODO MVC example, the point is, we had figured out a solution to reduced the code used in the example, we reduced half of the rust code, and 2/3 of the CSS output in the TODO MVC example accidentally, it's unbelievable.

What is your goal for next week?

We are still working on completing the syntax upgrading, for now.

If everything goes Okay, next week we'll:

• Complete the TODO MVC example
• Complete the docs of our new widgets
• Launch the v0.3.0 of ElvisJS

What exactly launch means for ElvisJS?

This is a very important question for us, due to the type of our product, there are no obvious events for us to check out our status ourselves, pure technical product...I can keep developing it myself day and night months even years, which is not a long term solution.

The Launch in this summer camp exactly means completing the basic feature of ElvisJS, letting more developers join us instead of keeping developing it ourselves only.

What exactly launch for ElvisJS

• We need one more core developer who is a total fucking genius really has the passion and ability to develop ElvisJS, we can not look for him/her now, because the current stage of ElvisJS sucks and this is hard to attract him/her.
• We need more users to try our product

What issues/questions do you have?

We don't have issues/questions currently now, all issues/questions we have we got solutions, we are wondering if there are any questions we've never thought about.

Have you tested any assumptions, strategies, or software with users? What changes have you made by engaging in the market?

If you haven’t been in the market in any way with your project, why not? What is your approach to finish the next 4 weeks with confidence that you should continue your project or pivot?

We haven’t been in the market with our project because we stuck into the TODO MVC example...

We compared our project to our 'competitors' yew and seed, they cost around 400 lines rust code without their css file, and it will be around 300 lines in ElvisJS including 'CSS'(actually we don't need CSS file).

We've developed a lot of components for ElvisJS during the TODO MVC example which is the goal for 8 weeks, besides the components, we need to:

• Complete the official website of ElvisJS
• Complete the documentation of ElvisJS
• Reach 100 stars in Github(This is for verifying our project is realistic, now we have 55 stars)
• Develop a client for rust.cc(This is an optional goal)

Week-5

Product Changes

We composed a set of trait shortcuts for every style, developers can write any trait they want based on them.

This changing likes an add-on customize-able style system of the existing static style widget system, this can reduce lots of code in development.

Comparing to flutter and swiftUI, this is more flexible, comparing to React/Vue, this is more stable.

Overall Status

We are still stuck in the todo-mvc example but completed the syntax upgrading, so we bumped our versions to v0.3.0 as a new launch symbol.

Figured out that something like the todo-mvc example, they can be perfect today, but never tomorrow, it also can be a long term project for checking the syntax or usage of our library.

We tried to make a simple promotion on a developer community of China, V2EX, got 37 more stars on Github, for the status of the goal in this summer camp, 92/100 now, besides, our community(WeChat group) have 44 members now.

Goals of This Summer

• Complete the official website of ElvisJS writing in ElvisJS

We don't have an official website currently now, but we will start to write it next week.

• Complete the documentation of ElvisJS

The Elvis Book is updating this night, the challenge of this part is we re-struct our project this 5 weeks, the old book is outdated that can not be updating base on.

• Reach 100 stars on Github

Now we've got 92 stars, due to the syntax upgrading, we only simply promoted our project in the week-1 and the week-5, the next promotion is in the week-7, we are pretty optimistic to it.

• Develop a client for rust.cc

This is an optional goal, just because we are not sure if we have enough time to complete this in this summer.

There are at least 6000 rust developers are in touch in rust.cc, the website of rust.cc is quite ugly and we will re-write it and find our developers and users from there.

We will figure out if we can complete this optional goal next week.

What is your goal for next week?

• Complete our official website
• Keep optimizing the TODO-MVC example
• Keep optimizing the docs

What issues/questions do you have?

The exact issue of us is that we don't have enough time to get involved in our project, we make lives through our daily jobs on working days, develop our project on Friday nights and weekends, it is such a common issue which blocks us temporarily.

The solution of this is to find more open source developers to join us, carry on, and make it happen.

What we did last weeks made our library more stable and easy to use, this is a good start, thanks to Mozilla for pushing us!

But this issue might also the advantage of us, most of the big frameworks are developed by few people or big companies which are easy to come into a blind alley, we need more developers because we have to, so let's make ElvisJS become community fruition.

How are you going to get users?

For 10-30 users, we will ask our friends to try out our library.

We are not seeking for 100 users ourselves, because we are not developing an application like project, the way to get more users of us is to find a big user which is the current stage is rust.cc

Desc

We currently use HashMap<String, String> for styles, which is very ugly, should move them into enums, like the gesture enum.

Desc

It seems broken, maybe we can add git clone instead of compile the hello world in source together in the pr.

Desc

We'll update the book using ElvisJS in the future, so we need a markdown plugin writing in ElvisJS, a standalone repo or inside the current repo.

Desc

The wasm bundle currently has not been optimized in the compiling process in elvis-backend, need to optimize the output size.

Solution

Add this wasm-opt function to

https://github.com/elvisjs/elvis/blob/d8f2aea23009676e089d8ba3c2f72c4993a45561/crates/backend/src/manifest.rs#L185

I prefer to import the wasm-opt library directly for myself, downloading the binary seems verbose.

Week 3

Launch Date

2020-08-11

Product Changes

Add chain style syntax to widgets instead of struct style.

Overall Status

We didn't accomplish the goal we set up last week, but we've got great progress in our project, the struct of widgets and styles are all in order now, developing components comes really easy.

What is your goal for next week?

Launch version 0.3.0

• A quite complete style system
• Examples for several usages.

What issues/questions do you have?

No

The current components transformation is based on HTML string, this limits the cross-platform feature of Elvis.

Desc

It's kind like the arch of substrate, but it will make the high-level API more elegant and easier to use, and the cross-platform feature will be easier to implement by this.

Keep trying advanced trait

Week 1

What did you accomplish this week?

We accomplished the Event Listener part of our Project.

This is absolutely the core module of our project, things come easier after this, and we can develop a TODO MVC example the week after next, things work just like we planned, no surprise, this is not good.

We didn't promote our project this week, 1 more member in our WeChat group and 1 more Github star(now is 55 stars), but we are thinking about this, in the week-3, there must be some solutions.

Time shortage as all of our teammates have daily jobs, I just moved to the city our teammates located in, lots of moving house stuff and troubles on my work, but all of them are finished now.

What will you accomplish next week?

Simplify the code of our project, lots of historical verbose code after this week's pushing.

• State Machine
• A better syntax in our projects
• Examples
  • A Click Button APP example
  • A Counter APP example

What issues/questions do you have?

Most of them are technical, they have been listed in our Github issues.

We know one of the features of Open Lab is founders and authors can communicate with others on this platform, an embarrassing problem is...we as Chinese who never been aboard, our English sucks, it's hard for us to communicate with English speakers, but anyway, this will not slow our steps.

How can we promote our project efficiently? Our features:

• Open source Project
• Backend programming languages for Frontend usages
• Chinese Team

We are considering:

• More docs and examples
• Find a senior who has high public regard to try our project
• Buy some ads on Chinese programming websites(maybe can reach large programmers?)

Product Name

Elvisjs

Updated one-sentence description of your product.

Web assembly UI Library for web pages

How are you going to refocus your idea and refine your northstar for the rest of the program?

The TODO MVC is our north star for now(in the week-3).

All we need to do is developing more products based on our project as examples, but what should we do after the TODO MVC? Even we have a plan implementing all components in the Material design, we know that is not the real north star, we have to sell this project to some big companies.

Ideal Products:

• Blog System
• CMS System

We should develop an awesome product based on this project as well, we already have this idea years before, and Elvisjs is just for that project original speaking —— A programmable Blog System for people who don't know how to program, but generally speaking, that is the project after the development of Elvisjs in our timeline, we don't want to think or talk about it too much currently now.

But whatever, the rise of Elvisjs is written.

Desc

Elvis is extremely basic for now, add more useful features for developers

Examples

• hello-world
• Counter APP
• Router APP
• TODOMVC
• Blog Template

Products

• rust.cc client
• markdown book

Deps

To implement the examples above, Elvis needs to add:

• router
• state machine in production
• gesture event driver

Desc

The root README makes something mixed up for now.

Desc

The current code we have is not friendly for developers, people need a UI template while they developing elvis components.

Ideal implementation

• A template for pure rust embedded in rust code for developing #3
• Maybe a cargo command, help us init an Elvis project in rust.

The state machine doesn't work...It's buggy to pass complex data to wasm, we need to use Closure instead of Fn, ref gesture.rs

The syntax of the state machine is hard to use, need to refactor as below

Components without state

struct Hello {
  name: String,
}

impl LifeCyle for Hello {
  fn create(name: String) -> Self {
       Self { name }
  }
  
  fn render(&self) -> Center {
     Center::with(Text::with(&format!("Hello, {}", self.name)))
  }
}

Components with state

struct Counter {
  count: i32,
}

impl LifeCyle for Counter {
  fn create(count: i32) -> Self {
    Self { count }
  }

  fn render(&self) -> GestureDetector {
    GestureDetector::new(
      Text::with(format!("count: {}", &self.count)),
    ).register(Gesture::Tap, |&mut state| state.count += 1)
  }
}

Week 0

Since we are in the first week of the program, what is your plan to hit the ground running this week and put yourself in the best possible position to succeed over the next 8 weeks?

The first week is just like the weeks before or after it for us, to let other developers in, we have to keep developing the core part of Elvisjs, and we'll do some promotion jobs aside from now on.

The initial works will take about 2 weeks.

We currently don't want to think or plan too much about the weeks after this first two, because we have already done it on our basic resume, and recorded it as issues in our Github repo, so, let's start it.

Good News

We just introduced this project to the rust community of China last week, got about more 30 stars on GitHub, and created a community in WeChat(An IM App in China) which has 36 members who are interested in our project for now.

A front-end developer of the community of Elvisjs wants to join us, we are planning to sync the concepts to him this weekend.

Initial Promotion Plan

Here is a documentation plan about introducing the arch of Elvisjs, for developers, for users, and for someone just interests in this project, we just need to complete the doc before doing something more about the promotion.

Besides, we set up a blog for week reports last week.

Initial Development Plan

First of all, we have to make the core module stable before others joining our community or trying our library, otherwise, we are achieving nothing.

To make the core module stable, here are 4 things left:

• Basic Elvis Event Listener Module(Complete almost 50%)
  • Gesture System
• Basic Elvis Router System(Depends on Event Listeners)
• Elvis State Machine(Easy to implement based on the current arch)
• Re-struct the arch of Elvis for syntax optimizing(This is quite hard, but already sorted out ideas)

After completing this, it will be easier to let others join this project, and the coding works will focus on the common UI components at that time.

What is...the best possible position?

There is no best possible position for us, we are in the best possible position all the time.

Week-7

Overall Status

It's hard to say...we took a break and did nothing this week.

Besides, we cooperated with two designers and made an artwork this week, https://clearloop.github.io/eleland/genesis/grid/ cells of the web, and the SVG operating will migrate into ElvisJS after this artwork is done.

Updated the style trait usage of ElvisJS and wrote an official website last week which week we forget to submit our status.

About the client of rust.cc, we just delay it, because we always have the chance of it, but the artwork not.

What is your goal for next week?

We will keep completing the artwork mentioned in overall status, and repair the state machine of ElvisJS next week.

What issues/questions do you have?

We still don't have issues/questions, and we're quitting the competition for the final prize because we really don't have enough time to chase it currently now, and it doesn't matter, we have already got what we need from the Open Lab, thank you all.

But we'll keep submitting the status reports, it's kind of an appropriate encouragement for us. Hope we can join the Mozilla Builders Program next year, as full-time builders.

Desc

Rust doesn't support optional arguments like javascript, the syntax of style is too verbose, for example:

impl Default for TextStyle {
    fn default() -> TextStyle {
        TextStyle {
            bold: true,
            color: Colors::Pink,
            italic: true,
            size: Unit::Rem(2.0),
            weight: Unit::None(400.0),
            height: Unit::Rem(1.0),
            stretch: Unit::Percent(100.0),
        }
    }
}

We need a syntax of chain setting styles like:

let style = TextStyle::new().bold(true);

Desc

Let talk about what will we ship in 8 weeks? How does it follow through on the promise of fixing the internet?

Ship in 8 weeks

1. A stable Elvis core library #27

The core library abstracts UI structure out of any platform, it is the UI design in pure code which representing the vision we can see from our eyes. The UI of web, native, and desktop will build from this.

If Elvis's basic library is not stable, developers will not join in, because the logic of the current code is hard to contribute, and people won't know what we are doing and what we will achieve.

2. Examples of Elvis #22

How developers use our library? How to let them know what they can build through Elvis? So we need some examples to show the usages of our library.

3. *UI Components #28

This is the core part of this 8 weeks, we need to compose a lot of components to achieve our goal —— Making UI development as easy as it should be.

A basic structure of an APP includes:

• *Layout
• *Inputs
• *Navigation
• Surfaces
• Feedback
• Data Display

We will build at least full of the first three categories of the list above in pure rust and wasm.

4. rustcc #29

If we have enough time, we will rewrite rustcc.cn also, because it is the largest rust community in China, we need the help of rust developers, and they are actually who will use our library as the first users.

Fix the internet

We will fix the verbose web development workflow which is controlled by the javascript system before.

The javascript developing system is buggy, package managing, environment configuring, dynamic languages, weird syntax...Common people need a better choice to reach the internet, join the internet, express their ideas freely as in freedom, not be limited by the ideas of others, just because programming or implementing their own ideas is too hard.

Though rust code is difficult to learn in some way, but we will make the syntax of Elvis as easy as it could be for developers, people don't need writing Javascript, HTML, and CSS in future, except newbies, lots of experienced developers can't implement their ideas immediately just because they can't stand the current web things above, these are what we want and what we will fix finally.

Desc

websocket err, send message failed :Io(Os { code: 32, kind: BrokenPipe, message: "Broken pipe" })

How to reproduce

Just run epm dev under the directory of your elvis APP, modify your code.

Desc

ElvisJS is as a stable stage now, we need to update the book.

Desc

The current stage of Elvis.js is not easy for others to join, to solve this problem and move on, we have to complete the core modules below:

• Event Listener #26
• Router #25
• State Machine #24

Desc

It caused by warp, the development server, is there any other lighter way to start HTTP and WebSocket servers in rust?

We can write an HTTP server and a Websocket server ourselves, ref to TDN's http.rs