The Ember Times - Issue No. 55

nuqneH Emberistas! 🐹

Read either on the Ember blog or in our e-mail newsletter what has been going on in Emberland this week.

This week you can learn about updating your Ember app 💁🏻. Learn from firsthand experience how to become an addon maintainer 💪. Get some tips on writing your own RFCs ✨. Check out the new SEO tactics of Ember 🔎 and last but not least learn about the potential move of Ember to a new chat platform 💬. Go ahead and enjoy!


Don't Worry, Ember CLI Got You Covered 💻

The number one tool for updating Ember.js apps or addons got even better. The newest version of ember-cli-update now runs qunit-dom-codemod for you. This means that you, with close to no effort at all, can utilize this great addon for your tests.

And the cool thing is that ember-cli-update fetches new codemods during runtime - so no need to update to get this nice codemod! To run the codemod, type ember-cli-update --run-codemods and magic will take care of the rest for you.

You can visit the addon page for ember-cli-update to read all about it or visit qunit-dom to learn about all the nice features it provides.


Start Small - How I Became an Ember Addon Maintainer by Ryan Mark 💪

ember-user-activity is a great addon. It fit my needs and worked perfectly…until I needed to use Fastboot. Seeing how others had solved Fastboot related compatibility issues, I cloned ember-user-activity and got to work. After a few suggested tweaks by the author, my PR was merged, and a new version was released. A few weeks later, a new version of ember-cli was released. I've always updated my own app, but I had never done an addon. Excited about this new challenge, I updated ember-user-activity to the latest ember-cli version. Moments later, after submitting my PR, the author sent me an invitation to collaborate. The author asked if I could help him maintain the addon, and I enthusiastically agreed. As of today, I have published a handful of releases. Even though I didn't create the addon, I had ownership, and it was exciting to be a part of the addon community.

TL;DR, one of the easiest ways to contribute, and possibly becoming a collaborator/maintainer of an addon, is doing small, chore like work for the author. Authors, and even current maintainers, always appreciate the help. Not only does it keep the addon fresh, but often the addon needs a fix or two to be compatible, allowing for even more contributing.

Interested in contributing in a hurry? According to @mixonic, an Ember.js Core team member, the version of Ember.js used in TodoMVC has been out of date and he's asking for help. Check out the conversation and lend a helping hand!


Have you ever dreamt about creating your very own RFC? ✨

If you've ever wondered how Request for Comments come about, now you have a great chance to peak into its thought process. It might look like they pop up overnight, but there is actually a lot of work and support that goes into them before they are ready.

As an example, our beloved contributor @jenweber is doing an amazing job by putting together tutorials for ember-cli. 👏 More specifically these tutorials will explain basic commands and how to make your first addon.

In order for this specific RFC to be ready the following steps are being taken:

  • Brainstorm about which parts of Ember need more documentation 🤔

  • Find a co-inspirator to iterate your ideas with 👭

  • Reach out to the CLI Teams to get more ideas and feedback 💡

  • Get a couple of early reviewers 🤓

  • Draft the RFC and get more feedback from all the stakeholders 📖

  • Make a proof of concept 👨‍💻

  • Publish it 🚀

  • ❔❔❔

  • Profit 🤑

Not all the above steps are mandatory, but it gives you a pretty good notion of what might be involved.

And now that you know, why not stay tuned for this specific RFC and make your contribution? All comments and new writers are more than welcome! Click here to learn more! 📢


Find Ember on the Interwebs with the Power of SEO 🔎

These past days, weeks and months lots of efforts have been focused on improving the discoverability of official Ember resources including the website, the Guides or the API docs. The visibility of these sites to various search engines 🔍 , for example, DuckDuckGo, Baidu, AOL Search, Dogpile or Google plays a major role in helping developers find the information they are looking for. To improve Ember's visibility on the web, Search-Engine Optimization (SEO) of these pages is one of the most effective measures.

Simple, yet effective improvements for Ember sites included tests of functional redirects (1) and fixes for broken links (2, 3, 4). Other high-impact efforts included a new meta data structure for the new Guides and the continuous evaluation of web crawler data.

If you have previous experience with SEO and you're interested in casting some keyword magic ✨🎩 for Ember sites, check out the #st-website channel on the Ember Community Slack Chat and join other SEO analysts in their quest to make Ember the No. 1 search result on Ask.com.


RFC: Goodbye Slack, Hello Discord 💬

@MelSumner has proposed an RFC recommending that the Ember community chat moves from Slack to Discord. Ever had a message on the Ember Slack disappear on you in a channel or DM? Discord stores chat logs forever, so losing history would no longer be an issue. Better communication and transparency FTW!

Our one gripe with the potential move is the confusion between Discourse and Discord… 😅

Discord is the chat host to many open source projects, such as Yarn, Vue.js, and Reactiflux.

Have some thoughts on the proposal? Get involved on the RFC!


Contributors' Corner 🤝

This week we'd like to thank @krisselden, @kellyselden, @thoov, @DanielRosenwasser, @stopdropandrew, @ijlee2, @amyrlam, @kennethlarsen, @jessica-jordan, @samselikoff, @bmac, @pete-the-pete, @john-griffin, @gabrielgrant, @localpcguy, @kasunvp, @mike-north, @twokul, @Gaurav0, @jrock2004, @ryanto, @wagenet, @jenweber, @ThiefZero, @jpadilla and @heqian for their contributions to Ember and related repositories! 💕


Got a question? Ask Readers' Questions! 🤓

Office Hours Tomster Mascot

Wondering about something related to Ember, Ember Data, Glimmer, or addons in the Ember ecosystem, but don't know where to ask? Readers’ Questions are just for you!

Submit your own short and sweet question under bit.ly/ask-ember-core. And don’t worry, there are no silly questions, we appreciate them all - promise! 🤞


The Ember Times is What We Make It 🙌

The Ember Times is a weekly news editorial featuring all the new things that are going on in Emberland. Subscribe to our e-mail newsletter to get the next edition right to your inbox. And if you've always wanted to be an OSS journalist yourself, drop by #topic-embertimes on the Ember Community Slack Chat and write the next edition of the Ember Times together with us!


That's another wrap! ✨

Be kind,

Kenneth Larsen, Amy Lam, Miguel Braga Gomes, Ryan Mark, Sivakumar Kailasam, Jessica Jordan, Alon Bukai and the Learning Team