Simplicity Is A Virtue #

How To Build Modern Web Apps With datastar #

by delaneyj and iansmith #

This is a very sad HomePage #

I’ve been experimenting with tailwind and have an acecptable home page design that I could put here. It’s not good it’s acceptable. It’s basically a hero page from daisyui with the rocket image from the data-star.dev website. The text of the home page is–just to get started–

This is the best book about datastar. This a trivially true because its the only book about datastar.
This book was brought to by people who have strong opinions. Thankfully, those opinions are always correct. Heh.

Ideas? My visual design skill is between awful and unspeakably bad.

For Delaney #

• I am sorry that I used your name without your permission. Obviously, I will remove it if you don’t want to be involved. Nobody has seen this other than you and I can remove it quickly. However, I was hoping I could convince that this is both needed to address the “learning curve” of datastar and could be fun. The sidebar on the right of the text pages (check out the two or three in various states of disrepair in Lesson 00) is meant to be where get to put snark, memes, etc. Besides, you got top billing!

  • I used the “royal” we in the text. Again, I can fix that easily.

• Thematically, I think the book should really beat the hell out of the reader about simplicity. This is both because it’s true that DS is simple and we can really hammer the differences with the complexity of React and friends. Stylistically, I think the book should be fun and lighthearted. Lot’s o' memes.

• I’m planning to use mirabeau, the presentation giver that I’ve been thinking about, to be the app folks will build via the book. It shows off some nice things and would be fun to use! I think the tool should (natch) support Datastar demos that are embedded in the content!

  • My basic plan (such as it is) is that mirabeau is a program that exposes a webserver on localhost somewhere (no security issues). Then you connect to it with your browser and you can do all the things related to giving a prezo. The “slides” part will be in files in markdown and, because it’s go and we can, everything is hot. Just run goldmark or whatever. Every time you make changes to the content of the prezo it live updates into the browser. It would be a great meta-demo.
  • I think with a little bit of work on the server of mirabeau you could programmatically expose other servers that it creates via the golang os (or exec) interface. These are servers that are the ones that have specific demos on them for use in the prezo. Naturally they should be hot as well.

• If you think you have a better app handy, we should talk about it.

• I put together about the first 10 lessons for the book. The amount of details vary, but I think there is enough information for you to get the jist of the lessons. I HAVE NO ALLEGIANCE TO ANYTHING I’VE WRITTEN AND IT MAY BE TOTAL AND COMPLETE SHIT. PLEASE COMPLAIN.

• I built this site with hugo. I don’t have a super strong opinion about it other than 1) I know it and 2) it’s written in go, so I have more confidence in it. I’ll have do some machinations to get hugo to do the magic of running the so-called JIT of tailwind/daisyui as part of its server apparatus. It’s easy to do with hugo build but harder with hugo server (which is a localhost website with live update) because you need to fool with postcss and some other crap.

• I’d like to start putting out articles/lessons soon for the community see, comment on, send PRs, etc. This is to head off any intellectual competition and to attempt to absorb the any competitors’ ideas like an ameoba.

• My dream is that this book can be the git book for datastar. I think that book is a bit too bottom up and we should give people some success with candy sooner.