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Stable Builds

The 0.0.50 release

The main focus of Modulo alpha development has been rewriting the internal API used to make custom component parts. This is because the previous internal API (from before 0.0.30 or so) had inconsistencies and limitations, and it was clearly the absolute central way to extend the framework, and thus very important to get correct early on. I'm happy to say that the bulk of the internal and CPart API is stable, and the remaining tasks for Modulo alpha largely involve documenting, fixing various errors, and likely very few remaining actual new features or capabilities.

New API features

A quick overview of the new API features:

  • register() API, which is a "plug-in" system, an easy way to attach (or override) classes and functions to the Modulo object
  • Definitions API, which is a complete rewrite of the internal loading API to be more transparent and data-oriented for debugging, while producing slimmer and more consistent builds
  • Config API, which is a powerful configuration system for both application configuration and 3rd party module configuration
  • Processor API which allows for static functions to iterate on definitions, either private to definition classes (as static methods), or as public, re-usable mixins (which is how -src= is implemented, and how new data types can be implemented for the StaticData system)
  • DOM render phase which replaces "tag load directives" as the way to modify DOM before the reconciliation process begins.

New user features

All this effort was necessary to implement the following features:

  • Stable builds with fully bundled self-contained JS, CSS, and HTML (from the browser or CLI)
  • CPart feature improvements, including State allowing for stores (globally connected data with global refresh), Style supporting class-based isolation, StaticData's pluggable datatype system
  • Configuration definition - A new type of definition tag that lets you add static configuration scripts, for things like one-time set-ups that get run on every page load, or loading and exposing third-party libraries. It also allows via attribute setting to configure Modulo itself, first party libraries, or third party libraries.
  • Code quality - Modulo's codebase structure is getting simpler and shorter with these releases, as concepts are reduced into one