Re: ReSpec 3.2

This is very exciting (so much so that I'm top posting out of excitement!).  

Keep up the awesome work Robin!  

--  
Marcos Caceres


On Friday, October 18, 2013 at 1:19 PM, Robin Berjon wrote:

> Hi all,
>  
> if you're a ReSpec user, please pay attention to this message!
>  
> I am about to release ReSpec 3.2, which is a fairly major change. I've  
> run a fair number of tests (from the test suite and additional ones) and  
> it appears to be behaving well, but you never know.
>  
> I initially wanted to make an RC at a different URL, but the extent of  
> the changes are such (notably the new UI stuff and how it is lazily  
> loaded) that that's not easily possible.
>  
> After the release I have a list of specs that I know to be using ReSpec  
> that I will go through to triple check that all is fine. But just in  
> case, I'd appreciate if you could check at your end too. At the first  
> sign of trouble I'll back the changes out.
>  
> Such major changes are rare (the last one was 3.0, 20 months ago). The  
> next ones in the 3.2 series will be small and incremental as usual.
>  
> Things that have changed:
>  
> • The most user-visible change is that there is now a UI in the top  
> right corner. It features a button that when pressed shows a drop-down  
> menu of things that can be done. Right now that list is limited but the  
> modules that implement the functionality in the drop-down are loaded  
> lazily which means that we can add functionality there without worrying  
> about code size (notably linting).
>  
> Next to the ReSpec button are two pills that appear when there are  
> errors (red) or warnings (orange). Clicking them opens the list of  
> issues that ReSpec has noticed while running.
>  
> Error detection has been improved a lot in conjunction with this. This  
> ought to help with the many cases of "it isn't working" bug reports when  
> the error messages used to be in the JS console.
>  
> In addition to saving, which is still accessible as Ctrl-Alt-Shift-S,  
> errors can be opened as Ctrl-Alt-Shift-E and warnings as Ctrl-Alt-Shift-W.
>  
> Overall the UI can be made prettier — input welcome. I also suspect that  
> it may have some A11Y issues which I want to iron out ASAP.
>  
> • If the browser supports it, the saving dialog now uses the download  
> attribute on <a> to trigger a real download of the generated output, as  
> "Overview.html". For browsers that don't support that yet, you can  
> nevertheless right click the button and save link as. In both cases this  
> is faster than the previous methods.
>  
> • Code size is down another 10K, now at 44% of the original.
>  
> • The legacy module has been completely removed (work that started  
> with 3.0). All of the useful functionality in it is now available in  
> proper new generation modules, most notably a new core/biblio module.
>  
> • We no longer need to do weird things with JSON-P and <script>  
> elements, all is loaded cleanly as JSON. In theory this means that we  
> should be able to make the biblio parts fully asynchronous (which could  
> have a very positive impact on perceived performance).
>  
> • The functions that generate snapshots are now exposed on core/utils  
> and can be called at will.
>  
> • simple-node, a small library I wrote from the days before jQuery,  
> has been almost eliminated. It is now only used by  
> core/webidl-oldschool. I also removed everything from it that wasn't  
> needed for that (e.g. namespace support).
>  
> • Note that several of the above changes combined completely  
> eliminate the "berjon" (JS) namespace that used to exist. If you have  
> some really dirty hacks that tap straight into the internals that's the  
> first error you're likely to get.
>  
> • We've upgraded to the latest RequireJS (notably for building). More  
> notable, we now use jQuery 2.0. That drops support for some of the older  
> IEs; I don't think it'll be an issue for this usage.
>  
> • Testing has been made more correct in several cases.
>  
> Share and enjoy!
>  
> --  
> Robin Berjon - http://berjon.com/ - @robinberjon

Received on Friday, 18 October 2013 12:44:02 UTC