LiNK UI - RadiusDataSystemsLLC/LiNK GitHub Wiki

LiNK UI by Radius Data Systems, LLC

LiNK UI is an easy-to-use JavaScript UI framework and toolset designed with the most lightweight and latest JavaScript resources in the market today. LiNK UI abstracts those JavaScript resources to a level that is both easy to work with while continuing the modularity and buffet-style choice that the LiNK infrastructure was designed with.

LiNK UI is one of the newer portions of the LiNK Infrastructure.

Design Considerations

LiNK UI was designed with the following considerations:

Compositional Design
- Any component in LiNK UI can be used separately. No need to swallow additional overhead when you just wish to utilize a single utility. This allows for a buffet-style "use only what you need" performance model without initializing or paying for in resources what you don't.
Cross-Browser Support
- All components of LiNK UI support Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer 11, Chrome, Firefox, IOS Safari, Safari, and Opera.
Cross-Device Support
- All components of LiNK UI support Tablet, PC, and Mobile resolutions and functionality.
Freedom of JavaScript Frameworks
- LiNK UI can be used with some of the latest JavaScript technologies such as Angular2, KnockoutJS, ReactJS, and Meteor. Don't want to use the Page and Widget components that LiNK offers but may want to use some or all of the utilities in LiNK UI? You can do that! LiNK UI doesn't restrict or limit your freedom of JavaScript framework choice.
Freedom of Server-side MVC Frameworks
- LiNK UI can be used with any MVC Framework. Want to use ASP.NET MVC, Laravel, Symfony, Django, Express or Ruby-on-Rails? LiNK UI doesn't restrict or limit your freedom of MVC framework choice.
Coding Structure
- LiNK UI has been developed using TypeScript. The TypeScript code is written and structured in a way that is familiar to those who are used to writing JAVA and C# code. The reason for this choice in structure was to make it easier for developers to be just as productive as they are with those languages, enabling easy cross-functional and full stack capabilities.
Commenting Structure
- The source code of the LiNK UI was designed to be easy to read in itself. However, it's expected that someone who doesn't know JavaScript can easily read the comments and discern operating structure. Using TypeScript, LiNK UI is able to display detailed and commented code in TypeScript while the compiled or produced JavaScript is minified and without comments for optimization purposes.
No Service layer required
- While LiNK UI allows for widgets to be developed that require a service module backend, it isn't required that widgets or any code utilizing the LiNK UI framework require or be coupled to a service backend.

Features

LiNK UI provides the following features:

Buffet Style Implementation

LiNK UI was compositionally designed, this means that the end user has the ability to use either a single utility of LiNK UI without needing to load or utilize un-necessary and often unused resources.

Page and Widget Display Framework

LiNK UI utilizes a simple widget-based UI framework that allows for multiple operating areas, referred to as "pages" and components within those pages, referred to as "widgets".

A LiNK UI page is a portion of the webpage that can act functionally as a host class and widgets as independent and compositionally designed objects that are initialized and invoked via that host class.

LiNK UI widgets can be used independently from LiNK UI pages and can be used with other JavaScript technologies.

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Common JavaScript Utilities

LiNK UI also offers compositionally designed utilities that encapsulate common activities and popular JavaScript technologies providing an easy-to-use abstraction.

The following feature matrix illustrates the utilities offered by the LiNK UI framework: