There is a rapid advancement in the technology which results in various shifts in the field of web development. Mostly, the organizations used to depend upon Flex, but now due to the rapid transformation of the Flash platform, they are bending towards HTML5. It is very much obvious that this conversion from Flex to HTML5 is complicated for a company along with its team of developers. Every organization is adopting this transition desperately, in spite of having a wide range of obstacles. Let’s have a look at some factors that the developers should keep in mind:
1. Pick out a client-side MVC architecture
Working on the HTML5 web application frameworks is not an easy task for most of the developers. When they used to work with Flex, they used to get class system, component model and Model View Controller architecture, all in a definite manner. But, in case of JavaScript/HTML5 applications it is not the same thing.
So, you need to keep several points in your mind before making this decision for your company:-
- The framework should provide enough real world examples.
- The framework should provide a certain level of adjustability for the applications that your organization creates.
- The framework should allow you to create testable applications.
- Whether the framework is providing any kind of level or support, which is needed for your organization.
- What kind of level of support do you require?
2. Select an AJAX Library and DOM manipulation
A DOM manipulation and AJAX library is an important tool in the development of JavaScript. Modification has to be done to DOM in order to add and remove elements, change styling, etc. These modifications are done in JavaScript in order to make something change visually within an application. Now, the way of doing this modification is also different for different browsers. For this reason, we need a DOM manipulation library that will make these tasks much easier. jQuery is the most popular DOM manipulation library.
3. Quickly Choose Code Conventions
The flex applications use to offer some kinds of consistencies for Action Script and MXML, which is not possible in HTML/JavaScript. This is the reason the developers should work with the defined code conventions of the HTML/JavaScript. In order to gain success in their web development field, the companies should first adopt the existing standards and then should gradually move ahead to HTML5 development. The organizations that do not follow this process and move ahead with further development used to face little coherence between projects.
4. Create A Testing Plan
If you want to switch to HTML5 application, then a proper testing plan should be built. Firstly, the organization should make a decision regarding testing of units of code. The solution is to use Jasmine, which is a JavaScript BDD testing framework.
The second area to be considered is code coverage. JSCoverage is one such option that can help your organization in enforcing an expected level of testing in your HTML5 applications.
Now, the functional testing of the HTML5 application where HTML5 development can exceed Flex. The powerful testing tool was HP’s Quick Test Pro, but the quality functional testing of your HTML5 applications is provided by Selenium.
5. Build and Deployment Process
After the advancement of Flex, ANT and Maven tools were used by the organizations. If you want to build an optimized application of Flex, then you have to follow few discrete steps.
You need to have a plan for building your applications which should accomplish the following:-
- Cut short the complete JavaScript code.
- Integrate the minified JavaScript into a single file.
- Do the compilation of LESS/SASS CSS code.
- Combine CSS code into single file.
- HTML, JavaScript and CSS should be validated according to the web standards.
- Run unit tests.
- Run functional tests.
- Execute load tests in a staging environment.
Conclusion
Proper planning and research is required, if you want to empower your developers with these new technologies. The integration procedure can actually become the simplest by following the above guidelines.
