Welcome to issue #7 of TWiM!

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Updates in Meteor Core (MDG)

Meteor 1.0.5 Released

A new version of Meteor has been released. This contains an upgraded version of the Facebook API. The API changed from version 1.x to 2.2. There are various differences in the API, so I highly recommend looking at this guide on upgrading your application for the API change.

Help Test Meteor 1.1 - RC

Meteor 1.1 is almost here! This is the first release candidate created and I highly encourage everyone, especially those who have multiple OSs available to them (Windows + Mac / Linux) and can see if an application can be developed the same way and runs the same in both environments. Meteor 1.1 will be the first release that officially supports all 3 major platforms (Windows, Mac OSx, and Linux) and includes a brand new version / constraint solver which should speed up the package system and also make it more accurate.

Avi explains the difference between Rails and Meteor

Avital, a core developer, explains the fundamental difference between Ruby on Rails and Meteor. It's a short clip, but his point is very valid and a good thing to keep in mind when developing Meteor applications.

Nick Coe Joins the Meteor Team

This summary from Alice Yu should be just enough:

I'm really excited to introduce you to Nick Coe, who joins us today as the newest member of the Meteor community team. Nick will be running the Meteor meetup program full-time, helping our awesome local captains hold great meetups in almost 200 cities around the world.

If you are interested in his background, previous jobs, etc. visit the link and read more about him.

March Meteor Devshop Today!

Tune into the Meteor SF Devshop that starts very soon! Updates on what went on in the devshop will be in next weeks edition.

Updates in the Meteor Community

Meteor vs MEAN Stack

This is an awesome comparison of the typical MEAN stack and Meteor by Dan Dascalescu. What are the pros and cons of both and what benefits Meteor has over the MEAN stack. But, it does also give a realistic perspective on when not to use Meteor.

Meteor Interviews Episode #1: Josh Owens

Meteor interviews is an podcast series started by Paul Dowman that interviews various Meteor developers, both in MDG and the community. This is the very first episode where he interviews Josh Owens and Josh goes through his past career history and how he decided to take the path of mentorship and open source. It also includes how he decided to come to Meteor. It is quite the story.

Meteor Interviews Episode #2: Sam Hatoum

This second interview is with Sam Hatoum, author of the Meteor Testing book and a core developer for Velocity. In this interview, they go through testing methodologies and why testing is important for any application. They also discuss Velocity, the official testing harness / test runner for Meteor, and how it can affect developers building Meteor applications.

Working with Meteor in a Team

This is a two part blog post series by Abhi Aiyer from Workpop about lessons learned from working with Meteor on a large scale application with a team. Part one goes through general advice for working with a team on a Meteor application and then part two goes on to talk about specific things you can do as a developer to improve the process for your entire team. I highly recommend reading through both parts.

Package for i18n (internationalization) Support

This is another internationalization package, but it is different. If you go to the link, the author talks about why this package should be used over other ones and one of the biggest reasons (and why I would use it) is because it is more standardized. There are many other reasons, so I highly suggest you look into this package if you need some internationalization support.

How to Build Slugged Routes

This is an awesome tutorial by the meteor chef on how to build "pretty" permalinks and ensure your website has good SEO practices. It goes step-by-step and how to do it, it's a long tutorial, but definitely worth the read.

JetSetter

This is yet another development tool created by Max Savin. It is a tool that allows you to visually get / set Meteor session data. You can use this with his other tool, Mongol, and be able to visually manipulate your client side data!

Browser Policy

This is an awesome blog post by David Weldon about the browser-policy package in Meteor and talks about how important it was when preventing attacks and malware for their application, Edthena. He goes through and gives examples of how to use it and why it is good to have in a Meteor application.

Building Real-Time Web Applications with Meteor

This is heavily catered towards developers that are new to Meteor and want to start learning it. The author goes through a step-by-step process on how to build a simple book listing application. But, he explains important Meteor concepts along the way. It's a good resource to point beginners to and i'm happy to see more of these articles spawning in various places. Spreading the Meteor love!

Most Impressive Meteor Features to Show in Demos

A lot of people are contributing to this topic on the Meteor forums about what ways they help show Meteor off to an audience. This topic is full of great ideas from various people and if you are planning on or want to do a talk on Meteor in the near future, I recommend reading through the replies to this topic.

Meteor Kit Workshop in NYC

There is a Meteor workshop happening in New York on March 28th, 2015. If you are in the area and want to learn Meteor, this workshop could be the jumpstart you need.

How to Create a Reactive Google Map

This is a great tutorial by David Burles showing you how to take a basic Google map and make it reactive! He goes through all the steps needed to do so and it's very well done.

Testing Meteor Packages with Mocha

This blog post talks a little bit about testing and shows a new test reporter made by the awesome people at Respondly. The test reporter is beautifully designed and honestly, I will most likely be using that test reporter.You can install it with: meteor add respondly:test-reporter

Introducing Sikka: A Firewall for Meteor Apps

Meteor applications have a high level of security (in my opinion), but they are still able to get DOS attacks. Sikka is a package made by the MeteorHacks team to help prevent those attacks. This seems like an essential package to have in your Meteor applications to prevent attacks to your application.You can add it with: meteor add meteorhacks:sikka

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

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