Motivation

When Test A Tag was first developed, many of the technology choices were driven by the most popular tools of the time. While those technologies were well-suited then, they were already on the path to being replaced by newer, more modern solutions. Node.js, for example, began evolving to better support front-end development, bringing the same simplicity developers enjoyed with Express on the server side to building applications for the browser.

Below are some of the original tools that were used, along with what became of them.

• Bower, once a popular package manager for front-end libraries, gradually became obsolete as developers increasingly adopted NPM for browser-based packages using tools like Browserify. This approach gained significant momentum and was eventually formalized and improved with the introduction of Webpack, which became the standard for bundling and managing front-end dependencies.

• Gulp, a flexible build tool known for its customizability, eventually fell out of favor due to the extensive configuration it required. Its popularity declined as Webpack emerged, offering a more integrated and efficient solution for modern front-end workflows.

• Bootstrap 3 was a major upgrade when it launched in 2013, but as web standards and development practices evolved, several disadvantages of Bootstrap 3 became apparent, especially compared to newer frameworks and later Bootstrap versions (like 4 and 5).

The older module structure and reliance on the Bower ecosystem made it difficult to add new features, which is why the original version has remained largely unchanged for the last several years. Although the original version remains stable and largely bug-free, the lack of new features and the growing difficulty of building on top of the existing codebase made further innovation increasingly impractical. And thus, the idea of a remake was born!