Back to the days when I was learning the first steps on programming, around 2008, there was already a well based community developing web applications, so I’m not from the ages where programming was defined by text-based applications, hard GUI and on. Although my first contact with a terminal, writing commands, showing powerful results, motivated me to learn more and more about desktop programming. While the world was adopting the web as the developing platform, I felt it very unstable comparated to the desktop. Maybe that was an illusion of my young mind, but even so things changed, Web is a really powerful place today, we have JQuery, Django, Rails, and, particularly, Angular and Bootstrap.

Last year I decided to leave my pride and start to seriously learn javascript (until that it was just a bunch of few useful commands to me) and what I saw was a terrific language. Combined with CSS3 and HTML5, we get the power to build a web page which have the performance of a desktop application, running on the client side, and offer cutting edge dynamism through the web. A language that runs fast and gives me stability were some of my first glimpses, my surprise was the freedom I felt about designing my frontend and how independent it can be to the backend. That last fact helped me to modularize my own work, bring a kind of not-forced harmony to my projects. Still, develop a beautiful page was a weak spot.

For my newest page glauberrleite.com, I decided to use new technologies and invest in design for viewers, trying to keep things straight. After learning the basics on Javascript, I found JQuery and finally AngularJS, developed by Google, which gave a little concern at first. However, AngularJS is very good in providing a MVC architecture, that cleans our code and eases the maintenance. AngularJS provides a quick solution to app development and is worth even for static pages, providing effects like tab switch. A blog tool was developed through AngularJS. I learned AngularJS via CodeSchool.

Bootstrap came with the need of responsive layout. We live in a world of mobile devices replacing a lot of desktops. I prefer desktops, but know that people are devoted to mobility. Having this in mind, basic CSS knowledge is enough to work with simple bootstrap, although its power reaches far beyond. Their official documentation is perfectly readable, however W3Schools offer a good tutorial to learn.

I’m not a design pro, but felt very good with the result. I know it needs some work to refine, e.g. include the comment functionality for posts, which I’ll need to build a web service, but the product is going through the way I was mentally designing. I was even thinking about the possibility to use that technology to this site, but it was designed to be used even in text-based browsers, and I can’t see any of these softwares running javascript, which is a requirement to both technologies.