JS Framework Specification

JS Framework Specification
Project state	Planning
Tracker issue	MDL-48392
Discussion	[ https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=268190 ]
Assignee	Damyon Wiese

Background

Moodle has used YUI as it's javascript framework (since 2006). We have built in support for using their combo loaders, javascript build chain, module support, debugging and many other nice features. We use YUI to provide a standard API between different browser features and for the many nice things that are built in like dialogs, ajax requests, events, classes and inheritance.

Earlier this year (2014) Yahoo announced:

we have made the difficult decision to immediately stop all new development on YUI in order to focus our efforts on this new technology landscape. This means that, going forward, new YUI releases will likely be few and far between, and will only contain targeted fixes that are absolutely critical to Yahoo properties.

This started a (very constructive) forum discussion on the future of JS in Moodle (https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=268190).

And following that discussion we made a policy decision (https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-47036) to create a "first prototype/example as described by Dan above with JQuery, RequireJS and grunt".

This document is meant to clearly document the features / characteristics of this prototype/example and compare it to our existing YUI integration. It should discuss how the 2 solutions can co-exist during a transition period.

Summary of forum discussion

The forum discussion has had many contributors and is full of valuable comments. Please read it: https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=268190.

Here is a much shorter summary of most of the things that were discussed: