Magical Mystery Tour of V8 Back Office

Umbraco Spark 2019

Pete Duncanson / @peteduncanson / offroadcode.com

HQ Rock!

• V8 is a huge achievement
• There is never enough time
• People in glass houses...
• But its good to be improving
• "Positive thinking" can only get you so far
• What do I know?

V8 launched

• Too soon?
• If only I believed in it hard enough...
• Got to be released sometime
• We've crossed the "Event Horizon"

Why too early?

• Worked on right up to the wire
• Where are the docs?
• Whats changed?
• Call that a FAQ page?
• Where are the packages?
• Missed Opportunities...

Missed opportunities?

• API's now can't be changed
• Package developers only want to upgrade once
• AngularJS upgrade in name only
• No frontend tests
• Actually theres 150 for "blue prints"

Yet it has to be released at some point

• The difficult "second" album
• Time to bed in before Code Garden
• Focus on other business
• Its the future so lets make it work

Doing OUR bit to make it better

• Dig into the stuff HQ can't do
• Document the bits they haven't
• Highlight the areas that need work
• Suggest how those areas could be improved
• Start working on them
• If you can submit a Pull Request

Package development

• Its a lot of work
• UI can change breaking our hacks
• Lack of front end UI tests means anything can change - theres no contract
• No way to store config built in
• Need more support on what should be included

Automated testing of the frontend

• Started it!
• Community effort needed
• Trapped by the UI
• Trapped by the AngularJS upgrade
• Trapped by the Event Horizon
• I blame Brexit

Optimising the back office

• Speed for everyone!
• Reducing JS is best way to it
• Less code to download
• Less code to parse and run
• Refactoring to AngularJS 1.7 goodies helps
• Can we use ES6?

Javascript compression revisited

• ClientDependency does ok
• Can modern stuff do better?

AngularJS v1.7 goodies

• Inline templates
• Switch to using components
• No separate controller file
• Load components when needed?
• Reduce "scope" leaking
• All results in less code!

We can use ES6!

• V8 browser support has changed
• Build chain already uses Babel
• Added ruleset to target those browsers only
• ES6 again removes a lot of boiler plate code

The AngularJS code base is...funky

• Bloated namespaces
• Hard to find anything
• Which template to edit?
• Where to add a new component?
• Which controller does what?
• What events are available?

Why bother?

• Its already working?
• A better environment for all
• Easier bug fixes and PR's
• Components get us close to the future
• Better performance for all
• Who else is going to?
• I've learnt a tonne!

I hope you've been inspired!

offroadcode.com