Includes Sass that targeted GOV.UK Template HTML
and also moves some link styles to `globals.scss`.
Also removes bits of frontend build that copied
over GOVUK Template files.
The cookie_message block was part of GOV.UK
template but is not included in the GOV.UK
Frontend template.
This adds it back in along with JS to set the
cookies from GOV.UK template and styles, taken
from the Design System's website (which I assume
has the right colour contrast).
This includes the JS for all GOV.UK Frontend code.
If our frontend build includes a module bundler in
future, we should only include the JS for the
components we use, as with our Sass.
Means our rollup bundling doesn't leave any
artefact files lying around that we'd then have to
deal with.
Also includes:
- removal of some JSHint config' marking the
artefacts as scripts to ignore
- use of streamqueue package to allow the same
ordering of scripts as before
It's not obvious how the code that includes JS
Modules in the frontend build works.
This adds lots of comments to explain the various
bits and flattens `modules/all.mjs` to just be a
single function that starts off the window.GOVUK
namespace.
Also removes `module/all.js` from the repo'. It's
an artefact used by the frontend build so
shouldn't be included as source code.
Includes Sass that targeted GOV.UK Template HTML
and also moves some link styles to `globals.scss`.
Also removes bits of frontend build that copied
over GOVUK Template files.
The cookie_message block was part of GOV.UK
template but is not included in the GOV.UK
Frontend template.
This adds it back in along with JS to set the
cookies from GOV.UK template and styles, taken
from the Design System's website (which I assume
has the right colour contrast).
This includes the JS for all GOV.UK Frontend code.
If our frontend build includes a module bundler in
future, we should only include the JS for the
components we use, as with our Sass.
HighlightTags was bad because:
- we haven’t called placeholders ‘tags’ for a long time
- it also does resizing of the `<textarea>`, not just highlighting the
placeholders
Expands the API of the macro to allow nested
checkboxes to have a summary tracking the current
selection, the fieldset to expand/collapse and
buttons to be added to allow jumping between
states.
Includes making 'Done' button inline on mobile.
Helps differentiate it form the form submit.
Gulp changed its API in version 4.0. The watch
task was not updated to the new format when we
moved to this version.
This moves the watch task to the new format.
The gulp-base64 package has 11 dependencies with
vulnerabilities listed against them as of this
time. It also doesn't seem to be maintained any
more. The last commit was in 2015 and there are
issues and pull requests up to bump the
dependencies.
This replaces it with gulp-base64-inline.
gulp-base64-inline takes a single path, which it
prepends to any image paths it finds. Our image
paths are actually URLs, not filesystem paths so
we need to send it a relative path to repoint the
URL.
This commit includes changes that remove a few
`@import`s from one of our sass partials.
They aren't needed as those files are imported
further up the stack and `_typography.scss` has an
import in it that overwrites the new
`_url-helpers.scss` we added here.
Since it moved to ES Modules in version 2.3.1,
diff-dom stopped including the `diffDOM.js` file
in its NPM package.
We don't do any kind of bundling in our build yet,
just concatenation of our scripts and some
minification of the results so we can't take
advantage of this yet.
The `diffDOM.js` file is still available in the
Github release so this moves to referencing that
in the `package.json` instead, until we start
using a bundler.
I opened an issue to check this is what the author
intended:
https://github.com/fiduswriter/diffDOM/issues/84
The latest version also adds Rollup as a peer
dependency.
Bumping NodeJS to 10.15.3 removes the need to
transpile `gulpfile.js` as this version includes
all the ES6 features used..
Also removes .babelrc file. This was included to
ensure the gulpfile was transpiled correctly so it
is no longer needed.
ES6 has some nice new features. Specifically relevant to this piece of
work are:
Arrow functions[1], whose `this` context is bound the value of `this` in the
current scope and can’t be overidden. The code is cleaner as a result, and
doesn’t need the addition of a bind polyfill for older browsers.
Template strings[2], which are similar to triple-quoted multi line strings in
Python. This means less fiddly and error-prone string concatenation.
This commit adds Babel[3] to the Gulp pipeline. This transpiles Javascript
written to the ES6 specification into code which is compatible with older
browsers that don’t understand ES6 syntax.
It also rewrites the gulpfile itself using some ES6 syntax, for the same reasons.
1. https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Functions/Arrow_functions
2. https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/template_strings
3. https://babeljs.io
Users can add placeholders to their messages, eg
> …your vehicle ((registration number))
when the message is sent, this gets replaced with the data the user uploads, eg
> …your vehicle LC12 BFL
We reckon that it will be useful to see that the placeholder has been
recognised, ie that its syntax is correct, before uploading any data.
We reckon that the best way to do this is by styling it differently to the rest
of the text that the user types.
This is not a trivial problem. There are two possible ways to do it:
1 Write a Google Docs-style text rendering engine, which completely replaces
the native HTML `<textarea>` with a custom control, and programme what should
happen when the user types something that looks like a placeholder, or
presses an arrow key, or makes a selection, or…
2 Leave the `<textarea>` in place, unmodified, and duplicate layers in front
of/behind it to visually replace a placeholder with the blue lozenge
Unsurprisingly, this commit implements 2.
There are four layers. Each layer contains live-updated copy of the text in the
textbox, and each is styled differently:
- one layer behind the textbox to make the blue background
- the textbox itself
- a layer with the white text, which overlays the black text of the textbox
- a layer with an inner shadow to knock back the brackets
This is because of some interesting limitations:
- The text in the foreground and background must occupy the same physical space,
so no deleting characters from the duplicated layers
- Words can’t be split up into multiple elements,
eg `<span>((</span>regist…`:—this results in slightly different kerning to
`((regis…`, which messes up the alignment of the layers
- The textbox can’t be completely overlapped with a block of colour, because
the cursor disappears behind it. Trying to edit text when you can’t see the
cursor is hard.
Implementation
Technically this makes use of Paul Hayes work on Javascript modules in the
GOV.UK frontend toolkit[1].
It also makes use of the `oninput` event to detect changes to the textbox’s
contents. This is much more performant than `onkeydown`, `onpaste`, etc. Without
it the delay between user input and the layers all updating is too slow and you
see misalignment of the layers.
1. https://github.com/alphagov/govuk_frontend_toolkit/pull/227
…or how to move a bunch of things from a bunch of different places into
`app/static`.
There are three main reasons not to use Flask Assets:
- It had some strange behaviour like only
- It was based on Ruby SASS, which is slower to get new features than libsass,
and meant depending on Ruby, and having the SASS Gem globally installed—so
you’re already out of being a ‘pure’ Python app
- Martyn and I have experience of doing it this way on Marketplace, and we’ve
ironed out the initial rough patches
The specific technologies this introduces, all of which are Node-based:
- Gulp – like a Makefile written in Javascript
- NPM – package management, used for managing Gulp and its related dependencies
- Bower – also package management, and the only way I can think to have
GOV.UK template as a proper dependency
…speaking of which, GOV.UK template is now a dependency. This means it can’t be
modified at all (eg to add a global `#content` wrapper), so every page now
inherits from a template that has this wrapper. But it also means that we have a
clean upgrade path when the template is modified.
Everything else (toolkit, elements) I’ve kept as submodules but moved them to a
more logical place (`app/assets` not `app/assets/stylesheets`, because they
contain more than just SASS/CSS).
