

Using Meteor as a front-end library - matb33
http://frozeman.de/blog/2013/08/using-meteor-as-frontend-library/

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matb33
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
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
I almost did an edit to my comment to say "less" instead of "much less".
Generally speaking, Meteor is less verbose.

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WhitneyLand
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
Not sure, but you can time how long it takes to load their site:
[http://www.meteor.com/](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
That is a static page.

~~~
matb33
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...](http://webdesign.about.com/od/chrome/a/view-source-chrome.htm)
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
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
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.

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cell303
Isn't there the spark rendering engine that can be used independent of meteor?
[https://github.com/meteor/meteor/wiki/Spark](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
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.

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alexfringes
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.

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

