weekly news #21: integrating BrowserId, syncStorage, node.js, ownCloud

[Michiel de Jong]

Hi!

Today's weekly news is that the rewrite of our SDK is /almost/ complete. It's the integration of four things we've been mentioning already:

- BrowserId for signing in

- syncStorage for the client-side js lib

- node.js for serving the app

- ownCloud as unhosted storage

It's not ready yet though. I've not commited it to the master branch, only to the devel branch, where you can help develop it further, and get it working: https://github.com/unhosted/unhosted/tree/devel 

This rewrite represents a bit of everything we've been talking about lately. Integrating with ownCloud (and in the future CouchDb and hopefully camlistore and Locker project) was an explicit goal, so that we don't have our own code base to maintain, but rather, are an 'adjective' or 'supported format' for other projects.

The move to node.js is an attempt to be closer to our target audience. At the same time, node.js is awesome, because it's really fast to run and easy to program.

syncStorage is our answer to iCloud api (http://www.readwriteweb.com/mobile/2011/06/icloud-for-developers.php). it owes much of its philosophy to CouchDb. basically, the idea behind syncStorage is that web apps should be designed to work offline first, and the sync in the background whenever network is available. not stall or break whenever connectivity becomes unreliable. 'asynchronous synchronisation', sort of.

BrowserId solves most of the UI problems we were having with the double password (i.e. one password for the app, and one for the storage).

Putting these four things together will be sort of the version we got to during the first year of the project. I'll be dedicating most time until 9 September (our project birthday) to documenting, cleaning up, ironing out bugs, getting things presentable.

A lot of what we've been working on hasn't been worked out into consolidated form, so this is an attempt to resolve that. If we polish the current devel branch until we have it working, then host it professionally as a demo, document it, and publish proper howto documents, then we'll have something to show people who want to know where we are with our project.

Cheers!

Michiel.