Macaque: A New Project
Today I started a new project. Macaque will be a personal to-do or list app. Sounds simple, right? Unlike my other side projects I’m coding and designing in public from day one.
This project exists because:
- I want to learn more Node and Ember
- I’ve failed to find a list app I like (oh lord, please don’t suggest one)
- I’d like to own my data and ‘reinvent’ the list app experience (for myself)
If you care you can follow my progress on GitHub. I’m keeping the features stupidly simple because there is already so much to consider.
Starting point
I’ve played with Node before but I’m starting Ember development with a blank slate. This weekend I’ve been casually introducing myself.
While I dived into Ember routes and templates I threw together a quick Express app to serve fake API data. I feel comfortable with that now. I can see a list of tasks! The next step is add, edit, and delete functionality. That means going back to data storage and a real API. I want to do this quickly because it’s not my main interest.
Moving forward
Once the API is ready I’ll return to Ember and implement the functionality. For UI design I’ll start with either Bootstrap or Foundation so it’s not ugly. I’ll be designing the final interface as I learn Ember and will eventually throw out the framework and rebuild the HTML & CSS from scratch. The interaction design I’m envisioning will require advanced Ember concepts (I expect) so it will be useful to having a basic version in place first.
I plan to publish everything under the MIT license prior to implementing my advanced design. I think it will be a helpful review project for future beginners.
And if I get that far? I’m plotting the heinous crime of parcelling the website in a native Android wrapper and installing it on my phone.
Words cannot express how happy that would make me.
Before I continue with any of this I need an icon! If you see me tweeting a poorly traced Macaque face, this is why. If you too are interested in Ember, aside from the oficial docs, Robin Ward (Evil Trout) has a great Ember series on his blog.
Update: Part 2 — Test Driven Development Update: Part 3 — Prototyping Update: Part 4 — Ember Data and MongoDB
