DEV Community: Jan Dvorak

🚀 Meteor Impact is Back—Exactly One Month Away! 🚀

Jan Dvorak — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 09:47:33 +0000

Are you passionate about building webapps with MeteorJS? Whether you’re a seasoned pro or just Meteor-curious, Meteor Impact is the online community conference you can’t afford to miss!

What is Meteor Impact?

It’s the gathering for everyone in the MeteorJS universe—developers, enthusiasts, and creators. We cover everything from Meteor core to MongoDB, Apollo GraphQL, and the latest in full-stack JavaScript.

Why should you join?

Inspiring Talks: Hear from top community members like @storytellercz, @nachocodoner, @jankapunkt, and many more.
All Levels Welcome: Whether you’re just starting out or looking to level up, there are sessions for beginners and advanced users.
Hands-on Workshops: Dive deep into MeteorJS with practical, interactive workshops.
Community Hangouts: Network, share ideas, and make new friends from around the world—right from your home.
Shape the Future: Have a talk idea? Submit it and share your MeteorJS journey with the world!

Ready to join us?

🌐 Check out the full program and details
📝 Sign up now—it’s free!
🎤 Submit your talk proposal
🤝 Become a sponsor and support the community

Don’t miss your chance to be part of the biggest MeteorJS event of the year.
Mark your calendar for September 25th and let’s build the future of web development—together!

Introducing Meteor Work Groups

Jan Dvorak — Wed, 11 Sep 2024 18:45:05 +0000

Meteor Software is thrilled to announce the formation of work groups within the Meteor.js community to help drive the future of the platform, bring focus to key features, and ensure long-term improvements. These groups will consist of community leaders, contributors, and stakeholders who are committed to enhancing Meteor.

Two Types of Work Groups

To better address both ongoing needs and specific goals, we are introducing two types of work groups:

Standing Work Groups

These groups focus on overarching themes or sets of features that require ongoing maintenance and improvements. Examples of topics they will cover include:

Security
User Accounts
Build Tool
Testing

Standing work groups will operate continuously to ensure their areas of responsibility remain stable, secure, and up to date. Their work may include adding new features, patching issues, and improving existing systems over multiple releases.

Goal-Oriented Work Groups

These groups are created with specific goals in mind, usually tied to items on the Meteor roadmap. They will work toward achieving a defined goal with a clear deadline, typically aligned with a specific release. Once their goal is accomplished, these work groups will be dissolved, and responsibility for maintaining their contributions will be transitioned to a standing group. Examples of potential tasks include:

Adding roles and permissions systems
Implementing MongoDB change streams
Enabling database migrations
Integrating new bundlers such as Vite

Group Structure and Participation

Each work group will consist of:

A Meteor Software (MS) representative: A developer from MS will be an active coding member of each group. They will have merge permissions for PRs and oversee releases in goal-oriented groups. This role underscores MS's hands-on commitment to the project's success.
Critical stakeholders: These include original package owners (if integrating community packages), creators of alternative solutions, and key community members who have made notable contributions in the given field. Their involvement ensures the integration of the best possible version of the solution.
Contributors: Reliable, recognized community members who will work on major parts of the project such as documentation, tests, and core feature development.
Stakeholders from relevant companies: Organizations that depend on specific features and can offer critical feedback and testing support may also join.

It's important to note that everyone is still encouraged to contribute. The creation of these work groups is meant to provide leadership and focus on topics that are crucial to Meteor's
future, without restricting broader community involvement.

Work Group Leadership and Public Involvement

Each group will have a designated leader responsible for coordinating meetings and communicating progress to the wider community. With the exception of security-related discussions, all work group meetings will be public. This ensures that community members can observe the decision-making process, offer feedback, and contribute ideas.

Announcing first Work Groups

Goal-Oriented Work Group: Roles (Meteor 3.1)

Task: Integrate the community-developed alanning:roles package into Meteor core.

Expected Release: Meteor 3.1
Key Members: Denilson Silva, Jan Dvorak, Jan Kuester
Transition: Once the goal is met, this work group will evolve into a standing group: Accounts.

Standing Work Group: Accounts (after Meteor 3.1 release)

Task: Maintain and enhance Meteor's accounts system, ensuring it remains secure, user-friendly, and feature-rich. Possible future features include support for Passkeys and Apple OAuth.
Ongoing maintenance: The Accounts group will be responsible for future improvements and new feature development related to user authentication.

Standing Work Group: Build Tool

Headed by: Nacho Codoner
Task: Continuously enhance Meteor's build tools to improve developer experience and performance.

Goal-Oriented Work Group: MongoDB Change Streams

Headed by: Leonardo Venturini
Task: Add support for MongoDB change streams in Meteor, targeting a future major release.

Get Involved

In the near future, we will release a sign-up form for volunteers who are interested in contributing to these work groups. Whether you want to help shape the future of Meteor or just keep tabs on key developments, we encourage everyone to participate.
Note that we will be choosing people to join these work groups so it is good if you have some work history that we can reference. Note that there are also non-programming tasks like helping improving documentation. For company representatives and important determination will be if your company supports open source developers in the Meteor ecosystem.
This initiative will help streamline decision-making, prioritize important features, and ensure that each release brings exciting new advancements to Meteor.js. We look forward to seeing the positive impact these groups will bring!

Stay tuned for more updates and ways to get involved!

PS: Join us on Meteor Dispatches this Friday for Q&A session!

A quick guide to get started with Meteor.js community

Jan Dvorak — Fri, 14 Jun 2024 11:55:54 +0000

Hello, there! So you just started with Meteor.js or you have been using it for a while, but maybe now you want to find some help, talk to other people who use it or a good OSS developer/user want to get at least knowledgeable about the community. This guide/tutorial will introduce you to the basics of Meteor.js community and where to look for people.

My nickname is Storyteller, also known as StorytellerCZ on GitHub and X. My journey with Meteor.js began back in 2016 as my Master's project (that is still going today), and what started as a coding interest soon blossomed into a deep passion. Over the years, I've transitioned from a mere coder to a core contributor, even having the privilege to work for Meteor Software for a little bit. Today, I'm a community leader maintaining 60+ packages via Meteor Community Packages, co-hosting the Meteor Dispatches podcast every Friday, and I've even had the pleasure of organizing the Meteor.js conference (Meteor Impact). With my experience and love for Meteor, I'm here to give you some initial points on how to immerse yourself in this old, but still vibrant community.

In this quick guide, we'll explore the essentials of getting started with Meteor.js beyond the code. You'll discover the various ways to engage with the community, contribute to the project, and leverage the resources available to enhance your Meteor.js journey. Whether you're a seasoned developer or a curious newcomer, there's a place for you in the Meteor.js community. So, let's dive in and explore how you can become an active and valued member of this dynamic ecosystem!

Before we begin it is important to note that the Meteor community is old and has a lot of history (I'll cover that another time). Some established members can be very direct in voicing their opinion, especially when dealing with corporate communication styles (you could say there is an allergy to that in the community). Loyalty and seniority plays an important part in the community, but that is not at the expense of meritocracy. As everywhere observe and show respects to your seniors and you will be fine.

Many of the names of projects and products around Meteor have space related themes, so have fun with that if you are building something for Meteor!

Meteor account

First of you will need to have a Meteor account to access the official websites. You can get that on the official Meteor website. By clicking on the sign-up button on the top right. You use this account for anything Galaxy related, to publish packages (it is your namespace), so it is a good idea to have even if you won't engage with Galaxy or the community.

Meteor forums

Meteor forums are official place for community to gather and you can find all the major historical events there (if you dig deep enough). All the major announcements also happen there as any important conversations from elsewhere, together with links to anything of note.

Keep tap on the forums to stay up to date on the latest from the community and get help for any of your problems. Heck, once in a while we also get ask to identify meteorites 😁

Anyhow this is where you will need your Meteor account to log in.

Slack & Discord

Community also runs a Slack and two Discord servers.
While we don't like Slack and want to migrate eventually to Rocket.chat (build on Meteor), right now that is not happening, so if you want to reach out to community immediately and have immediate updates (including newly published/updated packages) Slack is a must. So join in on the fun.

For Discord there is the official server, but we also have ended up with two community servers, but they are not much used, but if you like Discord and know how to use it well you might be able to start a Renaissance here. The first server is linked from the official website. The second server is supposedly more community based, but it doesn't get much traffic.

GitHub

As any OSS project the development part is happening on GitHub.

Official

Meteor's long history means that there is quiet a few interesting repositories in the Meteor's organization.

One must not miss the main repository for Meteor, but you should know about Blaze, Reify and for React.js users react-packages repositories as well. There is much more which I covered previously or still will cover. If you are of the curious sort you might find the precursor to Storybook.js and other gems. 😉

The main discussion is happening on the main Meteor repo and is heavily technical. Discussions are mostly to discuss potential features and technical adjustments. Worth to jump in if you have something to add before you jump into the code itself.

Make sure to also check out the official blog once in a while or the dev.to page.

Meteor Community Packages

Over the years many packages got abandoned or their original creators have moved on. To help maintain the most important community packages a community organization has been created to maintain them and ensure that they can get updated when someone fixes something.

Podcasts & streams

Official

Twitch
YouTube
Podcast website

Meteor Dispatches

YouTube
Substack

Social media

Meteor is all over the social media. Certain segments of the community are active on X (I heard this is especially true for the Brazilian community)

Official

Let's start with all the official accounts:
X
X - Galaxy
Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram

My links

I do a lot of content around Meteor myself. I try to have at least something new every week, mostly on my streams, but occasionally beyond that as well, like this article.

Dev.to
X
YouTube
Twitch

Missed anything?

And there you have it! A quick intro into the Meteor community and where to find everyone! Did I missed anything? Please let me know and I'll be happy to expand this list.

If you like my work, please support me on GitHub Sponsors ❤️.

Meteor Community Packages listing for Hacktoberfest 2023

Jan Dvorak — Sat, 23 Sep 2023 18:37:36 +0000

With Hacktoberfest 2023 around the corner I went through the arduous task of going through the Meteor Community Packages and prepared them for Hacktoberfest and prepared for you a list of where and how you can contribute to MCP packages from beginner working on existing issues to issues for more advance people.

For almost any package that we have in MCP there is a set of common things that you can help with like adding TypeScript types (if they are not present), moving tests to GitHub Actions, writing tests, updating dependencies and applying code standards.
You don't have to ask if you can take on an issue, if you feel like it, go ahead, work on it and then submit a Pull Request.

Now then, without further ado, let's get started!

Awesome-meteor

Let's start with the easiest and newest repository. Awesome Meteor list. Contribute with providing resources, packages and anything awesome about Meteor.

check-npm-versions

There are two issues. The easiest should be to update semver dependency, the more advanced issue to do here is add TypeScript types or go one step further and do a TypeScript rewrite.

A note here that this package is used a lot through many other packages, so your work here is going to have significant impact down the line.

meteor-desktop

Meteor Desktop is looking for hero to fix issues and advance us as far as possible to the newest Electron version. Best if you have any Electron experiences. Check out the issues for more information.

denormalize

This package will have a 0.7 release during Hacktoberfest. What is really missing is to ensure that tests pass and fix any bugs that come along. Adding TS types would also be a great bonus!

GroundDB

This will be for the more advance developers. Through Hacktoberfest the big thing here is going to be to update this package and make sure that it works great with the latest Meteor. The easiest part here should be addition of TS types and using GitHub Actions to run tests and other things.

ground-minimax

Same as with GroundDB. Add TS types and GitHub testing.

meteor-api-untethered

A collection of packages to make Meteor available to other environments. Much work to do here, but I would not recommend this for beginners. If you know your way around Meteor though this might be an easy Hacktoberfest entry and get things working with packages like Storybooks and other where you need access to Meteor APIs outside of Meteor context.

meteor-autocomplete

This package needs some love. First to decafinate and rewrite in JavaScript or Typescript. Then we can make all the Blaze stuff optional and make sure to update everything to the latest version.

Meteor Autoform

A set of packages to quickly generate forms from schemas in Blaze. There is always something to do, fix or update.

Additional Autoform packages:
https://github.com/Meteor-Community-Packages/meteor-autoform-bs-button-group-input
https://github.com/Meteor-Community-Packages/meteor-autoform-bs-datepicker
https://github.com/Meteor-Community-Packages/meteor-autoform-bs-datetimepicker
https://github.com/Meteor-Community-Packages/meteor-autoform-select2
https://github.com/Meteor-Community-Packages/meteor-autoform-themes

meteor-browser-tests

Another packages where you can become the hero by fixing a bug that doesn't allow it run pass Meteor 2.3. After that we can update dependencies and have fun with it.

meteor-collection-extension

We need to fix tests here (issue with startup) and then we can probably quickly move to a new release. Beyond that then is updating support for newer Meteor releases, especially after Meteor 2.8.

meteor-collection-hooks

Following from the previous package, this one adds hooks to collections. This one has been recently released, but there are more bugs to tackle and new features to implement. This is a very popular package and your work will be appreaciated through the community.

Collection2

One of the top community packages. This one is for you if you want something more challenging. We have quiet a few issues to take care of towards v4 release, which potentially include integrating Simple Schema into the package.

meteor-elastic-apm

For those using Elastic APM, now is your chance to improve the integration with Meteor!

meteor-fast-render

Another popular Meteor package for faster rendering speed. We have a React SSR bug to fix and two enhancements that you can work on.

meteor-inject-data

Dependency of fast-render right now we don't have anything listed here to do, but you can always add TS types, update dependencies and add GitHub Actions tests.

meteor-link-accounts

This is one of my personal favorites. You can easily gain your Hacktoberfest points here by creating integrations to community connectors, following the example of existing integrations. Or if you want to make me happy add TS types.

meteor-method-hooks

A stable repository, but lacking. We need TS types and tests.

meteor-minifiers-autoprefix

Nothing outstanding. Just need the usual GitHub Actions tests, TS types, dependencies updates and so on.

meteor-mocha & meteor-mocha-core

The Mocha packages are part of Meteor Testing. Both packages will get releases during Hacktoberfest in preparation for Meteor 3.0 release. In the meantime you can help with fixing bugs and for example working on better integration with VS Code.

meteor-packages

A package to get maintain information on Meteor packages. This one needs the usual uplift, TS types, tests, etc.

meteor-partitioner

Great package for SAAS apps with multiple tenants. To get back up to speed we first need to decafinate this package so that everyone can start contributing to it.

meteor-postcss

PostCSS processor for Meteor. I would recommend this for more advance users as this deals with Meteor build plugin. What this needs is mainly update of dependencies and to test that it still works well with the latest Meteor and Meteor 3.

meteor-publish-composite

Recently got an Async update, so there might be some bugs lurking around. Probably for more advance devs who know a bit about Meteor's reactivity as we have quiet a few bugs around that, but there is some general work like TS types available as well.

meteor-roles

Absolute must for any app that has any slightly advance user management. Roles needs to get ready for Meteor 3, which means there is a lot of work on new features, bug fixing and so on available.

node-sass

Here we need to switch packages, so if I don't forget we will get a release or two here. You can help with the usual improvement work as the PRs should be ready to go.

meteor-simple-schema

Now this is something that @jankapunkt will most likely work on. Right now this package is not used as it usage was switched to the npm package, but the problem is that the latest version of the simpl-schema npm package is not compatible with Meteor and probably never will be, so for Collection2 we want to switch back to Meteor based simple-schema, so this package needs to be updated to use the latest version of simpl-schema, but Meteor compatible. So if that sounds like something you want to help with, then head over there.

meteor-tabular

Reactive data tables for Blaze. Needs all the love that it can get.

meteor-timesync

A utility package to sync time between server and client. Needs the usual uplift.

meteor-user-status

An older package that allows you to detect and display if the user is online or offline. Needs the usual uplift and release of a new version is likely as we already have some things ready there.

mongo-collection-instances

Allows you to get collection by its name and have multiple collections. This one needs to get ready for Meteor 3.

Packosphere

This is an exception as this is an app similar to Atmosphere to list Meteor packages. We will need to update the dependencies here at the very least and personally I would like to see the addition of functionality to display if a package has been deprecated.

react-router-ssr

As the name suggest, this is an SSR router for React. If you have experience with React SSR, then your help is vital here as we have a few bugs. Other than that TS types and the usual is also welcome here.

redis-oplog

If you are into scaling, then you can help by contributing to this amazing package.

Stratosphere

Now this one is is like Packosphere, but instead of displaying it hosts private packages. Somethings that large companies with Meteor might appreciate, or if you want to keep you creations private. It has been on my list to check out and get working again for a while. Would really love for more people to join in.

So there you have it! If you have any questions or want pointers feel free to reach out to me or @jankapunkt !

If you like my work, please support me on GitHub Sponsors ❤️.

Create your own styled-icons set

Jan Dvorak — Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:50:38 +0000

Styled-icons is a wonderful set that allows you to use popular icon sets in your React app through a common interface. We choose this as we could easily combine the different icons from various sets before we got our own. And we knew that when that time came we could slowly switch over to our own set, often with just changing the import path. We also wanted to make it easy for others to use our icons as well.

Now, with our icon set ready, the time has come to build our own styled-icons package and publish it. In this article I'll walk you through that journey.

svg-icons

First we had to look over how the current styled-icons are build and replicate that for our purpose. The styled-icons we use are actually the final result. The journey for the icons start with svg-icons where the various svg icons from all the sets are brought in and generated into standard output.

Originally we thought that we could just copy setup of the individual package and move to the next stage. Sadly the required tool which is a dependency is not published so we just went with copying the monorepo and replacing the various packages with just our own package.

Since we don't import from NPM package it was an easier setup where we put our original exported svg icons into sources directory and let the script take care of the rest. The source.js file then looked like this:

const glob = require('tiny-glob')
const fs = require('fs')
const path = require('path')

module.exports = async () => {
  const sourceFiles = await glob('source/*.svg', {absolute: true})

  return sourceFiles.map((filename) => {
    const match = filename.match(/([^/]+)\.svg$/)
    return {
      originalName: match[1],
      source: fs.readFileSync(filename).toString(),
      pack: 'literary-universe',
      width: '24',
      height: '24',
    }
  })
}

Exporting SVG icons from Figma

Now that everything was setup. All the dependencies running properly via pnpm it was time to test things out. I have exported few icons from our Figma and when I opened the Storybook to take a look there was nothing in the place where the icons were.

Took me a few hours to figure out all the bells and whistles of this. The underlying problem was that Figma doesn't export the SVG icons in the way we need. First it add fill="none" into the opening svg element which makes everything invisible. If you remove that you might get strange fillings in your icons. You might fix that by applying fill="none" to the offending shapes and strokes, but that will make those shapes invisible after converted by svg-icons builder. The issue here is that the SVG is not optimized as a web font. Thankfully there is a utility from inconly.io to change your SVG into an SVG that is webfont compatible.

Finally if you want you can further optimize the SVG code with additional tools like svgomg.

With that fixed we now have nice optimized svg-icons package ready.

Our own styled-icons set

With the svg-icons published we could now jump to our final step. Getting these svg-icons into styled-icons.

This was now super easy. Like with svg-icons we use the same mono repo and replace the packages folder content with just one folder with our own package.

In the package.json we need to make two changes (beside doing all the renaming of the package). First we need to add our svg-icons as dependency (replacing the dependency from the package we originally copied it) and finally in scripts change generate script to reference our svg-icons package instead of the original.

Now installing via pnpm from the monorepo and then running the installation script should take care of the generating the content of the package.

What's next?

So now we have things going you can check the final result in our repo. Next step is to add website like the official styled-icons website for our icon set to make it easy to find icons in our set, especially once our icon set gets larger.

If you like my work, please support me on GitHub Sponsors ❤️.

BlazeJS v2.6.2 released!

Jan Dvorak — Thu, 27 Apr 2023 15:45:24 +0000

A patch release for BlazeJS has been released.

This is a small patch release fixing two issues and moving TypeScript types into core for more comfort:

Add TS types to core
Stop establishing unnecessary reactive dependencies
Fixes for legacy clients

Many thanks to Gabriel Grubba, Denis Perov and Zodern for contributing to this release!

Next step is Blaze v3 which is in works. Version 3 will follow in MeteorJS transition away from Fibers and supporting async methods while maintaining all the things you love about Blaze. You can also expect updated dependencies and some speed improvements (when it comes fragment parsing). More things are in works, so make sure to check the Blaze 3.0 milestone for more details.

If you like my work, please support me on GitHub Sponsors ❤️.

Apollo integration with MeteorJS v4.2 release and looking to v5

Jan Dvorak — Wed, 26 Apr 2023 07:38:19 +0000

April 19th saw a a new release of Apollo GraphQL integration for MeteorJS. This MeteorJS package integrates Meteor's account system with Apollo and gives you access to the currently logged in user in the GraphQL context.

In your resolver that would look like this:

upcomingEventsNum: async (
  { _id, type, ownerId }: Blog,
  _: unknown,
  { user }: ResolverContext
) => {
  if (!user) throw new Error('notLoggedIn')
}

The v4.2.0 is a small update that saw the update to the latest Apollo client (v3.7.12) and update of tests to run on GitHub.

This brings us to talk about v5. Since the Apollo client is included in the MeteorJS package it makes the package quiet large and in constant need of updates when a new Apollo package is released. Since in most cases Apollo client NPM package (@apollo/client) gets installed regardless in a MeteorJS app when Apollo is used, the inclusion in the apollo package becomes redundant and is duplication of what is already included by NPM.
This becomes an issue when you try to slim down your bundle size as you suddenly have two instances of @apollo/client in your bundle.

Following the example of jQuery in BlazeJS (where jQuery was removed from Blaze and you have to install in as a peer dependency) the proposal now is to remove Apollo client from the apollo MeteorJS package and allow you to install and manage the Apollo client NPM package independently as a peer dependency.
This slims down your client bundle by removing the duplicate Apollo client and allows you to keep up with the most recent version of Apollo client, at least until changes demand changes in the Meteor's Apollo package.

This proposal is expected to be merged and released as version 5 of the Meteor's Apollo package. Feel free to provide feedback on the PR for v5.

If you want to prepare for this major package upgrade, you just need to add Apollo client package to your application (though chances are you already have it).

meteor npm i --save @apollo/client

Then you just need to wait for the release of v5 and upgrade to it when the time comes and you are done!

If you like my work, please support me on GitHub Sponsors ❤️.

Meteor Community Packages Async migration

Jan Dvorak — Mon, 09 Jan 2023 11:46:50 +0000

With Meteor 2.8 has started migration towards removal of Fibers. This includes a major changes in Meteor core itself, not to mention the impact it is going to have on the entire package ecosystem. To make this easier for everyone after Meteor 2.8 new API endpoints started emerging mirroring the existing one, but having Async added to their name. So meteor.call() can also now be used as meteor.callAsync(). This new API though is not synchronous like the original, but instead is, as the name suggests, asynchronous and requires the use of async and await. More and more API endpoints will be converted to this method so that Fibers can be finally removed from Meteor and Meteor can upgrade to the latest Node version. You can read more about it on the Meteor Guide and in documentation. Also keep an eye out on the changelog to see which new APIs have been added. There is also a GitHub project to see the current progress.

With Meteor 3.0 being scheduled to be released no later than in April the time has come to start preparing the Meteor Community Packages for this big step in similar manner.

This has been a debate on our MCP monthly planning meetings and a discussion has been started on our organizational repository. Stuff like versioning, common approaches, priorities etc. will be decided there.

We have a GitHub project to track the overall progress.
The first step is to determine priority (there just isn't enough maintainers to do work on all of them at the same time). We'll start with those that will either be super quick (so that we can practice what needs to be done) or those that are the most popular and widely used.
The second step will be to determine if the package is affected and will require the any changes related to async/await.
Third will be listing all the changes and assigning a maintainer who will oversee the efforts.
Then finally work will be able to start. This will take a priority over any other features.

There are two APIs that need to be taken into account in packages.

First the one calling Meteor API and other packages. Where possible, without breaking established pattern, migration towards the new API should occur. This will require bumping up minimum Meteor version so a discussion will still have to happen if there should be a feature or breaking version release happen.

Second API of the package. Same like Meteor is doing with its API so should the packages. Same concerns with versioning like above apply here.

In both cases a breaking version release will then happen after Meteor 3 release due to the changes in code.

Now that you know what is the plan I would like to invite you to join the discussion and, even better, to contribute in this huge endeavor.

If you would like to contribute you don't even have to write to me (though that is welcomed as well), just pick a repository, analyze it (or if you feel like it start coding already) and then submit you findings in a new issue on the repository. I will then link it to the board so that others can join in as well.

Hope to see you out there!

If you like my work, please support me on GitHub Sponsors ❤️.

Impact new keynotes, sponsors & trade show

Jan Dvorak — Wed, 14 Sep 2022 12:07:19 +0000

Impact is quickly approaching and with that we have more announcements to share!

Keynotes

Alim Gafar

Alim is most recently known as Vice President of Strategy & Community Growth at Meteor Software, but he has a long history with Meteor as being the main organizer of the Meteor NYC meetups among other involvement. For Impact, Alim will speak about building up the Ambassador program and what is next.

Gabriel Engel

Gabriel is the founder and CEO fo Rocket.chat, first major Meteor FOSS projects. He will give a keynote about how Rocket.chat has grown with Meteor over the seven years since it was originally conceived in 2015.

New Gold sponsor

Vazco

If you have been around Meteor for while you have no doubt heard about Vazco. The Polish company that builds amazing products with Meteor and gives back to the community. Vazco is back this year as a Gold sponsor of Impact.

Trade show

Finally the last addition that I will talk about in this post are trade shows. In many conferences there are some sorts of area where vendors, sponsors or sellers get to setup their booth and interact with the attendees, be it to sell their wares, scout for talent or spread awareness for their project. At Impact we will be doing two virtual trade shows.
One on Thursday and one on Friday where attendees can visit the booths of companies and interact with company representatives. Following that there will be period of 4 hours for additional one on one meetings.

That is it for today! Stay tuned for more updates soon!

In the meantime, there is still time to host a talk at Impact or have your company become a sponsor!

In any case, you should definitely sign-up for Impact!

If you like my work, please support me on GitHub Sponsors ❤️.

Meteor Community survey 2022

Jan Dvorak — Wed, 31 Aug 2022 12:45:35 +0000

September is here and it is time for another Meteor Community survey!

This year is probably the biggest and most advanced yet. Hopefully it is also the last one that takes place via Google forms and next year there will be enough time to build a dedicated survey similar to the State of JS. Fun fact those surveys are build with Meteor.

So what has changed this year?

First the survey is split into 4 sections:

Personal section

Just a slightly expanded section to get some basic information about you so that we can properly place your responses in the grand scheme of things.

About Meteor itself

These questions focus on the basic questions about Meteor like "What front-end are you using" and this year expanded to include official resources like Documentation and Meteor University.

Deployment

Similar to last year, this question focuses on running Meteor in production like where are you running your Meteor app, are you using APM and so on.

Meteor Community Packages

The final section takes a look on stuff related to Meteor Community Packages to provide a feedback on which direction the community should be focusing in.

New types of questions

There are new types of questions to rate satisfactions with different places of the Meteor ecosystem, resources and so on.

Livestream

I will be filling the survey live, on a livestream on September 15th! There I will give you some more details about why certain questions were asked and go into details about my answer, which will also include some Meteor history. I hope you will join me!

End date

Survey will close on 2nd October so that there is at least some time to get the initial results ready for Meteor Impact. So please share and let everyone know that this is happening!

Results

As always the data will be cleaned of any identifiable data and open to public. First though you can expect a first look on the results at my Impact talk about the survey. More details will come later with a full article. When? That will depend on how much time I will be able to put towards this.

Take the survey!

PS: Sign-up for Impact 2022!

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Meteor.js blast from the past: mobile package examples

Jan Dvorak — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 15:04:42 +0000

A quick blast from the past! In the early days of Meteor, three packages specifically for mobile development (understand Cordova) were released. Two of those mdg:camera and mdg:geolocation had also quick examples attached to them which I have updated and released this year (added to the Meteor example list recently).

There really isn't much to these examples (just straight ahead to show the function of the package), but like with most things in Meteor the great thing is that even though these packages are targeted for mobile is also fully usable in the browser. Due to how Meteor (and these packages are build) they detect if they run in browser (in which case they use the web API) or Cordova/Mobile (in which case they use Cordova API and packages). So with the same code you can have the same functionality in browser and on mobile.

Simple photo

First for the camera package, as the name suggest it requests permission to the camera and then takes a photo and displays it on the page.

Simple location

Again, focus on geolocation. Requests access to your location services and displays the received coordinates and shows them on a map. Originally the example used Google Maps, but the services to display Google map have since been hidden behind paywall, so I went with Open Street Map via free version from GeoApify. But if you look into the source code of the example you will find the code for Google Maps ready for you.

I wanted to highlight these two packages as they didn't receive much attention for few years (just refreshed them earlier this year - just needed some Cordova updates) and if you are doing anything with photo or need to get user's location they are a super easy to add and use in your Meteor application.

Do you use or have you used these packages? Any other older packages that you would like to see me cover?

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Blaze 2.6.1 released!

Jan Dvorak — Thu, 28 Jul 2022 09:11:00 +0000

A patch version of Blaze numbered 2.6.1 has been released fixing some issues like:

#370 templating-runtime@1.6.1, returned the Template.__define__ with warning message
#366 Prevent firing callbacks until members are destroyed
- fix destroying child templates when parent is destroyed; prevents memory leak and DOMRange "not attached" error
#374 Blaze.remove should destroy view before detaching
#376 Modify 'Must be attached' error to be more descriptive
#377 Add tests for Blaze.remove should destroy view before detaching
#382 Linters were added
#348 For-in loop does not work in IE fix
#349 fix regression: non array iterables were always treated as empty
#341 add support for arbitrary iterables in #each templates

Many thanks to Denilson Silva, @jankapunkt, @harryadel, and everyone else who tested, for making this release happen! 🎉❤️🎂

So what is next?

There are a few small tasks for Blaze 2.6.2, that you can check in the milestone. Anything that can't wait till Blaze 3.0 will be included in this patch release (or any other patch release until 3.0 is released).

Development on Blaze 3.0 has also started. Since this will be a major release it will include any potentially breaking PRs among anything else major. Check out the milestone to see what we are planning to do.

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DEV Community: Jan Dvorak

🚀 Meteor Impact is Back—Exactly One Month Away! 🚀

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Goal-Oriented Work Group: Roles (Meteor 3.1)

Task: Integrate the community-developed alanning:roles package into Meteor core.

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What's next?

BlazeJS v2.6.2 released!

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Alim Gafar

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Results

Meteor.js blast from the past: mobile package examples

Blaze 2.6.1 released!