Watch Out, Here Comes Meteor

Allison Howen
by Allison Howen 18 Apr, 2012

If you're into building apps, you might want to check out a new platform called Meteor, which is a Web framework that helps its users (experts and amateurs) quickly create quality apps that automatically update.

Meteor was created for new era of app developing. The platform is built around Smart Packages, which are small bundles of code that can run either on a client, inside a cloud service or both, and can manage their lifetime inside the modern distributed environment.

The platform offers a Smart Package that addresses the main challenges that developers face, such as updating a Web page automatically when data changes, or performing a hot code push, which updates a running application without users noticing the change. Developers have the ability to choose which Smart Packages they want to use in their app. Then, Meteor processes the Smart Packages together with the application into a self-contained bundle that is ready to be released into the cloud.

Meteor apps are written in JavaScript and aside from featuring live page updates and hot code pushes, the platform also offers clean and powerful data synchronization, latency compensation, interoperability, and provides the ability to run sensitive code in a privileged environment.

And, according to the company, more Smart Packages will become available as Meteor grows, including complex distributed cloud services, attractive user interface components and business processing frameworks.