On the first day of QCon, Zhuoran Zhuang, co-chairman of GMTC global Mobile Technology Conference and mobile technology leader, announced in Keynote that Weex, a cross-platform development framework, has begun internal testing, and will be open source in June. Meanwhile, they also released the official website: http://alibaba.github.io/weex, can apply for private in the above qualifications, and download the Android version of the Demo play.

After the conference, I did an interview with Zhuang Zhuoran, and got the official reply to some questions that you are concerned about, which is sorted out here. All the things I should and shouldn’t send are posted here, and I’m also fighting to get more fans

Weex basic information

  • Official support for iOS, Android, HTML5.

  • Write Once, Run Everywhere. You can write three platforms at a time.

  • DSL template learning super easy, directly write HTML, CSS, JS. This means you can complete, hint, check, and so on directly from existing editors and IDES.

  • Lightweight, scalable and high performance.

  • There are many integration options, including embedding in HTML5 pages and native UI.

The origin of the Weex

Weex formerly WeApp, a use native JSON configuration UI components to realize the dynamic framework, ideas about like this, you can practice to see in the center of the Tmall this configuration, already very cow, Weex is the evolution of the WeApp version, plus the ex remove App, has become now this name. They even made up a joke:

You give us a few weeks, so we bring you a weex.

Did you get the meaning of the joke?

Relationship with vue.js

If those of you who dabble in the front end will notice that Weex’s DSL style is similar to Vue. Js, a front-end MVVM framework, what is the relationship?

Weex consists of several key modules: DSL Transformer, JS Framework, HTML5/iOS/Android Renderer, and toolchain. The JS Framework uses some of the code directly from vue.js. However, this use also complies with the open source protocol (Vue uses MIT, Weex uses Apache), and the Weex team records contributions from vue.js and other open source projects in the source documentation.

Why not React Native

Mobile and Tmall tried React Native, then gave up. But take that idea, combine it with Web Component and vue.js, and you get Weex.

Chuang lists some reasons for this:

  • If you can do something about it, it would be strange to throw out your own solution and try to use someone else’s.

  • React Native’s JSX and CSS in JS are awkward to write. Taobao has many ISVs (i.e. various shops), and they only know Web technology before, so it is difficult to write this. In addition, the HTML standard has been tested over the past two decades, and the structure, style and behavior of HMTL/CSS/JS are naturally separate, making the code more maintainable. Ditching standards and inventing your own DSL is also unwise.

  • React Native focuses on platform independence, so it can’t use 100% code sharing. In fact, it needs to learn the features of each platform. Weex wants to use 100% code sharing.

  • React Native has performance issues in some areas, and Mobile hopes to lead the optimization process by itself, otherwise it will be passive.

About KPI project

Last year, when Handout announced the project to the outside world, it attracted people’s attention. Some people asked a question on Zhihu, and some people answered that it was KPI project Yunyun. A KPI project is a project done to achieve the KPI, but not maintained after the actual, etc.

According to Zhuang Zhuoran, IN fact, KPI projects can be understood from any dimension. Any company to make an innovation has a target, and if it has a target, it can be understood as a KPI project. From his point of view, whether it is a KPI project is not important, what matters is whether the target is set correctly and whether the problem to be solved is the core problem.

Regarding maintenance, regarding Ali’s current open source strategy, let’s move on to the next question.

Why do we have to test in private instead of open source?

The reason is that Ali has adjusted its open source strategy. In the past, Alibaba Group opened many open source projects, but many of them did not have follow-up maintenance, which is one of the reasons for being criticized as KPI projects. Ali himself wants to change that.

Now, We do open source, hoping to truly create value for the community, rather than processing the company’s pile of code and throwing it away, others have to spend a lot of effort to deal with it when they use it. Such an open source project is not meaningful. Ali wants to release open source projects that are alive and well.

After Weex online verification on November 11 last year, we are actually ready to open source, but there are a lot of preparatory work to do, such as documentation, supporting tools and so on. We have been working on these things for the past four months. We also conducted tests inside the group. Many students from BU and UC, including Autonavi and Tmall, participated in the DEMO and code contribution. In April, they felt it was suitable to release the DEMO, so they announced the internal test.

The internal test is similar to the idea of product operation, hoping to build open source projects like products, and the general open source projects of rapid iteration is not quite the same, currently can not say which is better.

Alibaichuan will hold an eco-conference in June for merchants and customers within alibaichuan ecosystem, including developers of course. Open source will be announced at the conference.

Baichuan.taobao.com is alibaba Group “cloud” + “end” core strategy is Alibaba Group wireless open platform, based on world-class back-end services and mature business components, through the opening of “technology, business and big data”, Provide mobile entrepreneurs with solutions that can quickly build apps, commercialize apps and improve user experience; At the same time, it provides diversified entrepreneurial services – physical space, incubation operation, venture investment, etc., providing comprehensive guarantee for mobile entrepreneurs.

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