<FINAL> Andy needs to give the Ok that the first alpha is ready.

[BradleyChatha]

Once Andy's had a look over the release candidate for the first alpha, then we'll go into the part of the dev cycle that he begins to try and use it properly, providing feedback for the next alpha.

[BradleyChatha]

Seeing as Andy was less than impressed with the changes I showed him, and my hatred for the codebase grew more and more, I've taken liberty for the 4th rewrite of the website.

I'm going to integrate as much as possible with what ASP provides me, instead of rolling my own solutions (e.g. I'm using Identity instead of my own auth).

I'm going to use an industry standard front-end framework (Vue.js in this case) instead of hacking each page together with its own broken JS.

I'm going to use an industry standard toolchain for the front-end, in this case Gulp as the task runner and file watcher, and webpack for compiling and bundling JS, TS, and Vue files.

I've researched into Dashboard-like designs, as I believe this will be the best fit for FarmMaster.

Using Vue.js, I have already created very easy to use components, and I think the result is much easier to work with, less buggy, and is visually more pleasing than the old design.

I haven't gotten around to much of the backend stuff, but one of my plans to improve on the previous project is to fully embrace GraphQL as the go-to API for querying and mutating data, as the old hybrid method I was using was... no.

Here are some WIP screenshots:

Hopefully I can finally write a codebase that can support my future needs, without the endless bugs and friction I've been creating thus far.

This will yet again delay FarmMaster's internal alpha, however as you've seen the substantial progress in design and codebase between each different rewrite, I'm sure you can understand I'm not doing this just for the sake of it.

[BradleyChatha]

I'm taking note from Azure's interface: By default you're in a "view" mode, but you can toggle into an "edit" mode:

View

Edit

I'm thinking of editing <window> to natively allow an edit toggle button in the top right, but I do worry slightly about mobile useability, since it's already quite a tight fit.

[BradleyChatha]

While GraphQL require some special things on the backend (see image below), I believe the benefits to the front end are still worth it.

(It's bad because every implementing class needs that huge parameter list, alongside their own dependencies)

[BradleyChatha]

p.s. don't talk to me about performance