Mobile-First Front-End Development - Salsify

Salsify is a mobile-first frontend platform engineered by ELITEX for the North American bureau of Il Sole 24 Ore, Italy’s leading financial newspaper. This was our first project with the client, later followed by PostCMS and Imagex.

Salsify functions as a hybrid system that extends beyond typical frontend capabilities. It independently extracts content from legacy systems into its own database, and then presents it through a modern, lightning-fast interface. With offline functionality and intelligent caching that anticipates user navigation, Salsify delivers a smooth reading experience while protecting the client’s existing infrastructure investment.

The 24 Ore Group’s websites relied on outdated technologies that damaged user experience and looked visually dated. Their systems were massive, with numerous dependencies built up over years of development. A complete rebuild or technology migration would drain both time and financial resources, so the client chose a practical solution: modernizing the customer-facing frontend while preserving their existing backend infrastructure and data.

We tackled this project as a fully functional R&D team with considerable creative freedom. Rather than following conventional web development approaches, we designed a solution more aligned with mobile app architecture. The team adopted the Scrum methodology, delivering tangible results at the end of each sprint.

This approach allowed us to maintain weeks of independent development while still following the client’s strategic vision. We could implement solutions as we saw fit, with the client providing direction rather than micromanaging our technical decisions. This balanced autonomy proved invaluable for innovation.

The entire collaboration took over 6 months.

Salsify functions as a backend-agnostic frontend capable of connecting to virtually any API or data source. Built with JavaScript as its foundation, the system leverages Angular, Node.js, and Sails.js within a microservice architecture. The server-side application consists of two key components: a REST API responding to user requests and a service that extracts content from external sources.

These components communicate through queues for easy scaling. Our MongoDB database efficiently manages large volumes of structured and unstructured data pulled from legacy systems.

Here is what makes Salsify exceptional:

This architecture enables pages to load without delay, as the browser loads the application just once. When users navigate through the site, there’s no need to render pages on the server again—together with other features creating a fluid, app-like experience.

ELITEX delivered a state-of-the-art system that dramatically improved website speed and user experience. Our client gained the ability to transform any of their existing sites into fast, modern web applications while protecting their backend investment.

Salsify’s success as our first project with Il Sole 24 Ore established a strong partnership that led to two additional systems: PostCMS, which enabled rapid new site development with flexible lightweight tools for content management, and Imagex, which unified and accelerated existing media files wherever integrated.

Key facts and numbers:

The senior-level team collaborated over several years without a formal team lead, fostering a flat structure where expertise guided decision-making. The team comprised: