Welcome to issue #5 of TWiM!

Updates in Meteor Core (MDG)

Meteor 1.0.4 - RC

Meteor 1.0.4 is almost here! There are a lot of users testing out the release candidates and issues related to the items in the release are getting handled quickly. It has a bunch of awesome features, bug fixes, etc. coming!

MongoDB 3.0 Works!

In the Meteor 1.0.4 release, MDG has confirmed that an instance of mongod running at version 3.0 works. I have talked previously about Mongo 3.0 support potentially working, but it is now confirmed! So, now you can get all the performance and space benefits of Mongo 3.0 with Meteor.

Allow Changing Password Without Logging All Users Out

This is a useful change for specific use cases made by Tom Coleman to add an extra parameter in Accounts.setPassword to allow you to specify that you don't want users logged out when the password is changed. If you want more information, see the related pull request.

Logic / Constraint Solver Improvements

David Greenspan has been hard at work! The use-logic-solver branch got merged into the devel branch and there were a ton of changes in that branch. In last weeks edition, the logic solver was mentioned due to the talk in the Meteor Dev Shop, but it is now getting merged into devel with over 31,000 changes! I'm excited to see what will become of this.

Updates in the Meteor Community

Reactive User Interfaces

This is a blog post by Percolate Studios about building Meteor apps with React. For those of you unfamiliar with React, it is a front-end framework built by Facebook and is very popular lately due to how performant it is. This post goes well in-depth about the various benefits of using React vs Blaze and why it pairs well with a Meteor backend. I recommend reading this.

React with ReactiveVars

Another great package to help integrate React with Meteor. This is a supplementary package to go with the original and it's a different way to write a React frontend with Meteor.

Do I Really Need nginx with my Meteor app?

This is a common question for those who are getting ready to deploy to a production environment and be ready for scaling early. This article does a great job showing you why nginx is important to use with your Meteor app for hosting. There are also performance benchmarks on how fast the page loads nginx vs nodejs and it gives very good visuals based on that data.

Meteor Package Builder

This is a Meteor package to help you build packages... INCEPTION!

Meteor Composability

This is a great article on how to utilize various features of Meteor and Blaze to make more complex applications. It talks about creating custom block helpers, utilizing dynamic template includes, and using those with your own custom data context. I highly recommend reading this to potentially get a different perspective on how to build out your Meteor applications.

Finding Meteor Developers

This is a really interesting discussion going on in Crater about finding Meteor developers and resources to do so for companies that are looking to use Meteor for their next project.

Live Query for PostgreSQL

This is an npm package created to help get a reactive postgresql setup on the server side only. It currently supports SELECT statements. This is a good way to start getting more developers to jump on and help support a reactive postgresql package for Meteor.

Cloud9 Official Meteor Support

Cloud9 now supports creating a Meteor application workspace in a simple two clicks! Meteor has landed on a very popular cloud development platform.

Easy way to Add Material Design to your App

This is a blog post by our very own Nick Weintge on how to add in a material design framework to your app to build some nice looking applications.

Crater.io has a New Design

Brand new design and I personally really like it! It was designed by Nick Weintge. If you have any suggestions or comments, post them here.

That's all for this week! Tune in next week for more updates in the Meteor universe.

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