Well, Just Think About It. Why Did the Meteor Hit You?
In the first 8 installments of this series, we zipped through the stratosphere at cheek-flapping pace, doing everything necessary to perform the basics: entering and saving data, then reading and displaying it.
We installed meteor, created a project, crafted some custom HTML, created a MongoDB collection and wrote data to that collection in JavaScript, read it back out from the collection and displayed it in an HTML table. We then spruced the page up a bit with HTML and CSS so that it wasn't quite as... "utilitarian," to put it charitably. Finally, we some JavaScript code to filter and order the result set returned from the Collection so that duplicates were not displayed, empty records were also omitted, and the Documents were displayed in a logical order (by Year Arrived, then Year Departed).
This is just the beginning, though. The things that can be accomplished with Meteor are virtually limitless, and the galaxy in which Meteor resides is chock full of tools and ports in a Meteorstorm that can be utilized as you move forward in the Meteorama, if you choose to become a Meteor Maven.
I've Figured It Out, It's Because We Need a Real Superhero
As noted, doing the basics with Meteor is not rocket science (no pun intended), but to move beyond those things, you may want to take advantage of the many facilities available for that.
The ease of getting started with Meteor might be compared to learning to play the guitar. To play a little guitar doesn't take much time or effort - just about anybody can do it. However, to become a virtuoso takes a lot of time and effort. The same is true with becoming a Meteor Maven, so to help you lift off on a meteoric rise, here are some links that can be of assistance. Check them out, and Keep them handy.
The Basics
Meteor Home Page
Introductory Video
Creating your first app
Official Meteor Tutorials
Meteor Documentation - Basic
Meteor Documentation - Full API
Cool Tools and Resources
Meteor Packages from the Atmosphere
Meteor Pad
Cloud 9 IDE
Meteor Tools
References
StackOverflow Meteor questions
Meteor Forum
Official Meteor Blog
Meteor YouTube Channel
Show's Over. Says Who?
This is the end of my 9-part series on getting started with Meteor - just the bare-bones, nuthin' fancy stuff. Who knows, though? I may write some more tips in the future as I delve further into this "way far out" technology. After all, I haven't even referenced "Rocket Man" or "Space Oddity," not to mention used any quotes from "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven"
