Helium FAQs
General
What is Helium?
Helium is a front-end software framework used to build custom learning experiences and applications on the Thought Industries Customer Learning Cloud platform.
Why did Thought Industries develop Helium?
Building and delivering highly differentiated and impactful learning experiences shouldn’t be difficult. Turning your vision into reality shouldn’t be constrained by the technical limitations of a software platform. Our mission for Helium is to empower customers to bring their visions to life through a simple and powerful framework that enables full customization and extensibility of the Thought Industries Customer Learning Cloud.
What are the common issues and struggles Helium solves?
Ultimately we want to make it easy to:
- Customize the web site & learner experience to achieve ambitious design goals.
- Modify the structure, appearance and functionality of courses, assessments, tests, and more.
- Incorporate external data into learner-facing components like dashboards and catalogs.
- Utilize internally-developed functionality, other CMS, CRM, ERP platforms and seamlessly integrate these systems into both learner and administrative experiences.
- Deliver in-the-moment training natively across multiple platforms beyond Web nd HTML
Who are the intended users of Helium?
As a software framework, Helium’s intended users are software developers.
What can I do with Helium?
The possibilities are endless, but some common examples would be fully customizing the look, feel and functionality of a learner site, customizing a catalog to retrieve and show content and courses that are externally authored and stored, extending a learner dashboard to pull in metrics or data from an external source, creating a new content type or building a whole new learning experience tailored and native for non-web platforms like mobile, AR, VR and embedded operating systems.
What areas of the Customer Learning Cloud utilize Helium?
Today, all of the learner-facing web site components along with access to the components data and in the near future content and page types.
What areas of the platform don’t utilize Helium?
The Ti Admin interface. In other words, the Ti Admin cannot be customized.
Do I need a Customer Learning Cloud account to use Helium?
Yes. As part of the Helium install process, you will be prompted for your instance name and api key.
Getting Started
Do I need to install any software in order to start developing with Helium?
Yes, node.js needs to be installed. We highly recommend using a version control system as well to track code changes and collaborate such as GitHub. A full list of requirements can be found on the Helium Developer Guide.
Can Helium be used to build headless experiences?
Yes. Helium’s GraphQL allows you to access the necessary data that you can then use to build platform specific user experiences using any front-end framework.
How can I get familiar with Helium’s GraphQL capabilities?
We provide GraphQL out of the box, which provides an IDE to access and run queries and mutations and view the GraphQL documentation. You can access GraphQL explorer after install here: http://localhost:3000/graphiql or access the static version here: https://thoughtindustries.github.io/helium-graphql/
Technical Questions
What are the core technologies that Helium utilizes?
React is at the core of Helium’s code-accessible components, coupled with Tailwind CSS for intuitive design and styling and GraphQL for high-performant and efficient data retrieval.
Are we required to use React with Helium?
No. You are free to use any framework or language of choice along with Helium’s GraphQL to build fully headless experiences.
Are we required to use Tailwind CSS with Helium?
No, Tailwind CSS is not required.
Where is my Helium code and applications deployed?
All of your Helium code is deployed on Ti managed infrastructure utilizing serverless Cloudflare workers for instant deployment across the globe providing exceptional performance, reliability, and scale.
When creating a Helium project, are any of my Ti Admin account settings or elements reflected and carried over to the project?
Your brand appearance (color, logo, etc.) and translations are readily available to use with Helium.
What version of React does Helium currently utilize?
17.0.2 Keep an eye on the community forums and developer site for updates.
Can learning sites be a mix of Helium pages and components and pages and widgets created using Ti’s traditional site design tools?
Yes. Helium is opt-in on a per page basis.
What developer tools do you provide in the Helium framework?
In addition to the code-accessible components, Helium provides a CLI for installation and deployment management, a GraphQL Explorer to access and run queries, code samples and documentation, and forthcoming SDKs for mobile and other platform development.
Is Helium open source?
Yes. Helium falls under the MIT License.
How do I get support for Helium if I have questions?
The Helium developer community on Discord is a great place to post questions or view answers to previous and frequently asked questions. It's linked above in under Community.
If I make changes to any of the components, will it be backward compatible with future updates?
When you modify an existing component, backward compatibility with future updates to the component is not guaranteed.
How and where are new versions of Helium released?
Helium versions are released via NPM.
Can I use my own version control/code management system to develop with Helium?
Yes, Helium does not enforce any version control system. You are free to use whatever you like.
How do I manage and synchronize my local development with our sandbox and production environments?
We recommend using a version control system to synchronize local development such as Git, GitHub or GitLab. For deploying to sandbox and production environments, you can choose your deployment target at deploy time.
How is Helium optimized for performance?
Where possible, Helium utilizes server side rendering (SSR) where the server converts web pages into viewable formats before sending them to the browser. This makes sites and learner experiences much faster and responsive compared to traditional client side rendering and also helps with search engine ranking.
Does Helium utilize streaming HTML and selective hydration, two major SSR features in React 18?
Not currently, but we are looking to support in the near future.
Does Helium utilize Server Components?
Not currently. Server Components are a more experimental feature that is still in research . We are keeping a close eye on this new technology and will circle back when it becomes more production ready.
How are Helium sites secured?
Helium sites are secured through HTTPS, standard across the entire Thought Industries platform.
How does SEO work with Helium?
Thanks to server side rendering, both search engine bots and humans get a faster page experience. This not only means a better UX, but it also eliminates speed-related crawl budget issues that accompany SEO results. Sending fully-rendered pages to search engine bots means that you’re not risking the “partial indexing” that often happens with traditional client-side rendered content.
How is localization handled with Helium?
Localized strings are downloaded from the Thought Industries platform during the Helium install process and are made available through a custom React hook. You are also free to use any alternative localization library you like.
Are there any built-in accessibility capabilities in Helium components for people who rely on assistive technology?
Yes, components follow Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.