Spiffed up the opening text with links to the excellent homepage

This commit is contained in:
dannguyen 2013-12-07 23:50:11 -05:00
parent 1f6904c0fc
commit 264aca8291

View file

@ -1,17 +1,23 @@
# Middleman # Middleman - Makes developing websites simple
[Middleman] makes developing stand-alone websites simple. The last few years has seen an explosion in the amount and variety of tools developers can use to build web applications. Ruby on Rails selects a handful of these tools: **Middleman** is a static site generator using all the shortcuts and tools in modern web development. Check out [middlemanapp.com](http://middlemanapp.com/) for detailed tutorials, including a [getting started guide](http://middlemanapp.com/basics/getting-started/). You can also follow [@middlemanapp](https://twitter.com/middlemanapp) for updates.
* Sass for DRY stylesheets
* CoffeeScript for safer and less verbose javascript
* Multiple Asset Management Solutions
* ERb & Haml for dynamic pages and simplified HTML syntax
Middleman gives the stand-alone developer access to all these tool and many, many more. Why would you use a stand-alone framework instead of Ruby on Rails?
## Why Middleman?
The last few years have seen an explosion in the amount and variety of tools developers can use to build web applications. Ruby on Rails selects a handful of these tools:
* [Sass](http://sass-lang.com/) for DRY stylesheets
* [CoffeeScript](http://coffeescript.org/) for safer and less verbose javascript
* Multiple asset management solutions, including [Sprockets](https://github.com/sstephenson/sprockets)
* [ERb](http://ruby-doc.org/stdlib-2.0.0/libdoc/erb/rdoc/ERB.html) & [Haml](http://haml.info/) for dynamic pages and simplified HTML syntax
**Middleman** gives the stand-alone developer access to all these tools and many, many more. Why would you use a stand-alone framework instead of Ruby on Rails?
These days, many websites are built with an API in mind. Rather than package the frontend and the backend together, both can be built and deployed independently using the public API to pull data from the backend and display it on the frontend. Static websites are incredibly fast and require very little RAM. A front-end built to stand-alone can be deployed directly to the cloud or a CDN. Many designers and developers simply deliver static HTML/JS/CSS to their clients. These days, many websites are built with an API in mind. Rather than package the frontend and the backend together, both can be built and deployed independently using the public API to pull data from the backend and display it on the frontend. Static websites are incredibly fast and require very little RAM. A front-end built to stand-alone can be deployed directly to the cloud or a CDN. Many designers and developers simply deliver static HTML/JS/CSS to their clients.
## Install ## Installation
Middleman is built on Ruby and uses the RubyGems package manager for installation. These are usually pre-installed on Mac OS X and Linux. Windows users can install both using [RubyInstaller]. Middleman is built on Ruby and uses the RubyGems package manager for installation. These are usually pre-installed on Mac OS X and Linux. Windows users can install both using [RubyInstaller].