Twitter launches a new web app

Targeted at those with low spec phones, Twitter today launched Twitter Lite, a product build on a modern suite of technologies that should be ring a bell with most front-enders today.

The new Twitter frontend is built using React (nb. made by Facebook), Redux, Normalizr, Globalize, Babel, Webpack, Jest, WebdriverIO, and Yarn (they have written about how they built it.

It is a good thing to see a large company not giving up on the open web. I’ve added the new Twitter Lite app to my phone (running iOS) and see if it can replace the native app (as I did with Facebook before). My first impression is pretty good. Most importantly, as promised: it loads faster, even without support for ServiceWorkers (while iOS 1.0 only allowed for web apps, its level of support is kind of bleak when compared to the efforts made by Google and Firefox). It could use some animation …

Getting started with Rails ActionCable (1/2)

As the lead developer at HeerlijkZoeken.nl I wanted to try the new Rails ActionCable technology for a new feature: shopping lists. The idea is that you can walk in a store or on a market, mark an ingredient as checked when you add it to your (physical) basket and continue shopping. ActionCable can make the experience nicer because it, based on WebSockets, allows for real time notifying other viewers and editors of the same shopping list. No more shouting around in the supermarket: I’ve got the milk! Sure, nothing essential, but I needed an excuse ;)

(Note that we recently migrated from Rails 4, so not everything was in place in our app, just ignore the bits Rails already made for you; everything has been tested with Rails 5.0.0.1)

Getting the basics right

To start: You need a web server that can open multiple threads, so if you’re still using Webrick in development (which can’t rece…