#flavortown

A Breath of Life: Welcome the Brand New Mobile Web Dashboard

We rebuilt another piece of the site with React

Background

A few months ago my colleague Robbie wrote a post about how the Core Web team is introducing a new web stack built on Docker, Node, and React. It is a beautiful vision, but we had only launched one tiny page on that infrastructure. This spring, we used that new stack to rebuild the mobile web dashboard from the ground up. And then we launched it.

Why we did it

We decided on building the mobile dashboard next for a few reasons. First, the dashboard is one of the most important parts of Tumblr—for many people it is their primary window into the content here. Because of that, most things that we develop inevitably touch the dashboard. It was time to raise the stakes.

The desktop dashboard and the mobile apps have been moving forward at a blistering pace, but have you seen the mobile web dashboard? It was stuck in 2015. Nobody ever made features for it because it was a completely separate codebase. We avoided that issue with the rewrite. Since the new version we’re building is responsive, our new mobile web dashboard will eventually also power the desktop web dashboard experience. This’ll make it much easier to maintain feature parity between the desktop and mobile web experiences.

Finally, we wanted to make something a little bit more complex than the image page, and the mobile web dashboard seemed like a good next step. It allowed us to start making authenticated API calls and figuring out how to pass cookies through our new server to and from our API; to think about laying the groundwork for a totally responsive dashboard, so we can eventually launch this for the desktop; to make a testing ground for progressive web app features like web app manifests; to start rendering posts that are backed by the new post format; and to figure out how to slowly roll out the new stack to a consistent, small set of users. We also had a pretty bad performance bug and learned a whole lot about profiling Node. (We plan on writing more in-depth posts about some of these topics soon.)

It is good

And the rewrite turned out really well. Even with more features like pull-to-refresh, a new activity popover, and modern audio and video players, we sped up our DOM content loaded time by 35%! The new page has a lot of modern web standards in it too like srcsets, flexbox, asynchronous bundle loading, and a web app manifest. You can install the mobile web dashboard as a standalone app now. It was also way faster and simpler to write using React than it was on our old PHP/Backbone stack.

We’re really proud of the new mobile web dashboard. We look forward to bringing even more new features to it in the near future, and launching even more pages on our new web infrastructure.

If you think this is cool too, come work with us!

– Paul Rehkugler (@blistering-pree)

If you’ve been following this Tumblr, you’ll likely know that we, the Core Web team, have recently started rewriting and modernizing the Tumblr web platform. This undertaking presents some incredibly exciting opportunities to innovate with lots of fun technologies. We’re working on improving every aspect of the web; the dashboard, the archive, the blog network, you name it.  

Are you a senior JavaScript engineer and wanna be a part of this adventure? Come join Core Web! You’ll help create the building blocks with which a brand new modern Tumblr will be built. Your work will directly impact and define the user experience for millions of users and the development tools for a large number of product engineers across several teams at Tumblr!

What you’ll do

We’re looking for an extraordinary senior JavaScript engineer who wants to take on the following challenges:

• Keep making our build and deployment more delightful and futuristic
  
• Help establish norms and standards for how this new web client should be architected, including setting JavaScript, CSS, performance and other best-practices, and introducing/creating the tools to achieve them
  
• Internally and externally raising awareness around the work the team is doing by being active in the Open-source and engineering community 
  
• Whatever else you think will help us create the highest quality web platform and development experience!
  

Who we’re looking for

An ideal team member is someone with:

• StrongJavaScript and CSSfundamentals
  
• Experience setting up Continuous Integration / Continuous Deploys
  
• Expertise in build tools like Webpack, Parcel (or similar)
  
• Pragmatism and the ability to decide what’s “good enough” (while planning ahead and knowing when to iterate)
  
• An ability to independently drive projects
  
• A desire to innovate and bring new things into the world
  
• An understanding of code quality, unit test coverage, and performance
  
• Empathy and the desire to elevate those around them
  
• The belief that work is just as much about the journey as the destination
  

Our current toolkit

• Webpack
  
• ES6
  
• React and React Router
  
• CSS Modules
  
• TypeScript
  
• Jenkins and Jenkins pipelines
  
• Docker
  
• Node and Express
  
• Kubernetes
  

If you’re interested, but your background does not include all of the above, please don’t let that hold you back. Let’s talk! To apply, follow the instructions at the bottom of our official job listings page! 

We can’t wait to hear from you!

“Where is Flavortown?” you ask again, landing another blow. The sound of it  makes you sick, but you’ve gone too far to stop now.

“Y-y-you don’t get it…”  your frost-tipped prisoner spits through a mouthful of blood. You wipe the red from your knuckles with an old rag, letting him speak.

“The question isn’t WHERE is Flavortown,“ he says. "But WHEN?" 

You think back to your mother’s kitchen: the smell of tomato sauce wafting from a pot, the taste of fresh soup hot on your favourite spoon. Sobs wrack your body. How could you not have seen it? 

"It’s okay…” he says. “We all remember our way back in our own time.”

But you are crying too hard to care now, trying to forget the trail of bodies that brought you to this moment, human lives smashed like garlic under the flat of your knife. All to lead you here. The gates of Flavortown. Not an arrival, no. A homecoming.

I HOPE YOU HAVE ENJOYED THIS EXCERPT FROM MY UNPUBLISHED PSYCH-THRILLER “THE GATES OF FLAVORTOWN” WHICH HISTORY WILL SURELY REMEMBER AS BEING THE BOMB DOT COM

I’m afraid this will be your final trip to Flavor town.

It’s Him