Custom Polymer designer: Please help!

147 views
Skip to first unread message

Boualem

unread,
Feb 25, 2015, 4:00:03 PM2/25/15
to polym...@googlegroups.com
We have created several custom-components and plan to ship them with a (modified) Polymer-designer for our users to create full apps for a specific industry.

So far the user is able to:
  • Create an app using Polymer components and our specific custom-components.
  • Preview the app without supplying a Github token (Github dependency has been removed)
  • Save the app: This saves an HTML file that is required to run (all the imports, etc)
  • Export the design: this will create a project/folder for the user with an 
    • HTML file (the same as in the save app case)
    • a bower.json file (with all the dependencies properly listed)
    • a .bowerrc (to force the components to be imported to the 'components' directory rether than 'bower-components'

In the next phase we want to provide the user the ability to reload their design in Polymer-designer and update it.

This is where we are having difficulties and need some pointers.
We've tried several paths that led nowhere.

I'm not sure if this is even possible or not with the current design of Polymer-designer.
I'm looking forward to some suggestions

Martin Amm

unread,
Feb 26, 2015, 8:24:38 AM2/26/15
to polym...@googlegroups.com, bouale...@gmail.com
It it possible - we've build our own designer version communicating with our backend by replacing the design-preview and designer-element components with our own implementations.

bouale...@gmail.com

unread,
Feb 26, 2015, 8:37:04 AM2/26/15
to polym...@googlegroups.com, bouale...@gmail.com
Thanks Martin for your feedback.

So far, the approach we have taken is to minimize the changes to the designer so that we are able to apply them when new versions are released.

While we did create new custom components for our users to consume, for Polymer designer we've only modified 3 existing files. All modification are tagged for easy extraction and application to new Polymer designer release.

Martin, 

In your implementation, are you able to load an existing design that was previously saved and continue editing it in the designer?

Martin Amm

unread,
Feb 27, 2015, 8:47:10 AM2/27/15
to polym...@googlegroups.com, bouale...@gmail.com
It would be nice if the designer gets a plugin architecture where you add your own storage providers. I had suggested that already in the past at https://github.com/Polymer/designer/issues/78 

Even the current, Gist based storage already allows to load previously saved code. There is no UI to select a gist, but when you append a Gist Id to the designer url then the saved code will already be loaded.

Boualem

unread,
Feb 27, 2015, 9:38:21 AM2/27/15
to polym...@googlegroups.com
I like your suggestions in your post. (issue 78)

In fact, we were thinking along the same lines. In our current implementation, Polymer designer may save/load design files from a web-server or from the local file system. The latter is when designer is bundled in a nw.js.

We were thinking about submitting some of our enhancements to the Polymer Designer project.

I'm not sure how open are the guys in charge, to these type of enhancements.

Justin Fagnani

unread,
Feb 27, 2015, 10:53:26 AM2/27/15
to Boualem, polymer-dev
Hi,

I'm working on designing a new version of Designer, rebuilt from the ground up to be more modular (yes - storage plugins :) ), support arbitrary components, template editing, Polymer 0.8-1.0, and more. We're very open to code and design contributions, I just have to get things in a state where I can publish some design docs.

As for changes to the existing version, I support that, but honestly would rather see effort go towards the new Designer. I'm working fast to get it out there.

Cheers,
  Justin


Follow Polymer on Google+: plus.google.com/107187849809354688692
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Polymer" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to polymer-dev...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/polymer-dev/4fcb820f-8446-408e-88f3-8daa6e49aa8f%40googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

bouale...@gmail.com

unread,
Mar 2, 2015, 9:24:20 AM3/2/15
to polym...@googlegroups.com
This is good news.

I didn't see any thing related to Designer in the 0.8 roadmap. So I assumed that the product was semi-dormant.

We will hold off submitting any changes to the current version. Please let us know when/how we can have a look at the new design/code and what's the process for contributing.
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages