Back to Basics with CloudSpokes and Meteor.js

I’m starting off 2013 by going back to basics re: my web development skills - attempting to master the core technologies - HTML, CSS and JavaScript.  I’m focusing now on JavaScript, by far the most intricate and difficult of the three.  I recently discovered the CloudSpokes Coding Challenges and thought it would be a good excuse to work hands-on with JS.

I just wrapped up my submission for CloudSpokes’ First Time Submitter Challenge for January 2013.  I built a lightweight web app used to track the status of projects.

Here’s my submission demo video:

Exploring Meteor.js was a lot of fun - in the past I’ve only really used vanilla JavaScript and some JQuery.  The neatest feature is definitely the live page updates (templates update automatically when database data changes).  There is a definite productivity boost to updating HTML/CSS, saving, and instantly seeing your changes reflected in the browser automatically.  In the future this could prove very useful for rapid prototyping web apps!

Interesting code implementation details: