Road to 1.0

[LukeAskew]

Fabricator has gained some attention recently, so I thought it might be a good idea to get some of my thoughts on the 1.0 release out in the open.

These are collected from emails, face-to-face conversations, issues, and my own thoughts. In order of how frequently they are requested, here's what it's going to take to get to 1.0:

Improved documentation

Probably the biggest complaint/suggestion I get is related to documentation (or lack of). Let's fix that.

• Overall audit of existing documentation; provide recommendations for improvement (organizations, gaps, etc)
• Explain toolkit/styleguide driven development
• How to add items to menu Add updating the side menu and categories #26
• Move "recipes" to wiki

Better partials

Another big request I get is for more flexibility in organizing and displaying components and structures. I've also been told that the whole concept of a "toolkit" vs a website as a deliverable is pretty confusing to clients. I'm hoping to solve these issues with a little more documentation and a overhaul of the templating system.

• Add ability to feed data (e.g. dynamic copy) into components/structures Component html source files #81 Ability to change text of component #69
• Open taxonomy - allow dev to choose toolkit organization (don't force components and structures)
• Materials (components/structures) should be recursively usable (e.g. using a component inside another component) - shouldn't break because of alphabetic compilation order.
• Notes in front-matter, not separate .md file

I've started work on this locally and hope to have a pull request soon. Also getting some good ideas from https://github.com/kevinsync/fabricator

UI enhancements

• Collapsable sidebar
• Improve overview page copy
• Simpler color chips
• Update favicon
• Update README.md

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Open to questions and suggestions.

[LukeAskew]

FYI, here's a first iteration on the new template system: https://github.com/LukeAskew/gulp-fabricate

It was built as a POC. There are some revisions in the works, but it's closer to what I'm thinking for Fabrciator than what's currently in place.

[dietergeerts]

Great! I love fabricator and it's great to see it will grow!

[jameswragg]

This is looking great!

The repeating problem for me is that I build a suite of components & styleguide that I'm happy with, start my client project with my toolkit CSS but the real-world requirements of my HTML quickly forks from my Fabricator component markup, reducing the usefulness of the whole process.

Ideally I'd author and fix issues with my components within Fabricator & my project would consume my Fabricator components but this is where my issue lies & unsure how to approach this as the project work I do is within a Django-esque framework and not compatible with Handlebars. Will v1.0 help at all here?

[LukeAskew]

That's probably the biggest issue with projects like this. My best advice is to treat your toolkit as a completely separate project with its own development lifecycle.

Fabricator is intentionally backend-agnostic so that the end product (HTML, CSS, JS) can be consumed by a number of different applications (.NET, node, etc).

I like to deploy my toolkit to a CDN, then reference those files in my end application. Any changes are made in your Fabricator instance and redeployed.

Adds an extra step, but its similar to how any other framework (Bootstrap, Foundation) is consumed.

[LukeAskew]

Fabricator has been moved to it's own organization as part of the 1.0 process!

Tracking for a release next week. Here's a sneak peek at the new logo:

[qaid]

Nice!

[LukeAskew]

"Docs" task has been logged in the fbrctr.github.io project. Check it out and please add suggestions: fbrctr/fbrctr.github.io#1

[LukeAskew]

💥 https://github.com/fbrctr/fabricator/releases/tag/v1.0.0 💥