Workflow

(N Wallis) #1

Hi All... 

 

There has to be a better way to develop in Matrix than using the web interface to edit HTML, CSS and JS files.  It sucks and its slow. 

 

I realise that editing files directly on the server would be dangerous (if the files even exist as files at all) - but what about improving the web interface for editing.  You could do a few simple things that might help this:

 

- Save the file via AJAX so we don't lose our place when saving commits to a file

- Maybe provide a different port we can connect to when preview content that live reloads when an AJAX save is triggered

 

They are two things I can think of that would speed up the workflow significantly

 

I have been doing as much development on my local machine as I can, but at some point the work needs to go into Matrix and its slow to edit from then on. 

 

Anyone got any other workflow they use for editing plain text files?

(Nic Hubbard) #2

When I am doing development on a new site I don't upload the CSS or JS file to Matrix yet. I work on them in a Dropbox folder locally, and then add the dropbox URL for those files in my parse file. That way I can work locally and any save I do will be reflected on my Matrix site within seconds. So just having a browser window open and refreshing will show the changes.

 

Super quick and easy this way.

(N Wallis) #3

Nice one - thanks Nic, that sounds much nicer.   I'll give it a whirl

(Bart Banda) #4

What version of Matrix are you using? This is pretty much one of the main reasons we developed the Git Bridge for 5.3. You can do all your JS and CSS coding outside of matrix and push it to the server when you commit:

https://manuals.matrix.squizsuite.net/git