Problem: The previous readme didn't really have very much information
about what Oasis is or what we want it to be. It wasn't very enticing.
Solution: Zoom out a bit and give a top-3 list of features that
distinguishes Oasis from other social networking applications and SSB
applications in general.
Problem: Your posts show up in Extended, which is unexpected because I'm
the center of my network, not some rando at the periphery.
Solution: Use the `socialFilter()` function to make sure that the
extended view only shows people in your extended network, not you. :)
Problem: We started using `cooler.get()` and `cooler.read()` because it
was impossible to use promises with SSB-Client.
Solution: I made some downstream pull requests into the MuxRPC module
and the SSB-Client module, which means that both of them now natively
support promises. This commit removes the weird convenience methods and
replaces them with the native promise support, which should hopefully
make the code easier to read and write.
Problem: I didn't really like random text posts from me being in the
readme, and the aspect ratio of the screenshot meant that it ended up
taking up lots of vertical space.
Solution: Use a wide screenshot of some concept art to keep it from
stretching vertically very far while still showing off the absolute
basics of Oasis.
Problem: There was one missing component that would filter out nicknames
from other people. This caused a problem where we could get a name for a
feed but it could've been assigned by a friend, which we don't want
right now.
Solution: Ensure that the subject of the message is the same as the
author of the message.
Problem: Search engines are controversial and my understanding is that
most people on SSB don't want their messages indexed by search engines.
If that's the case, we should probably disable it.
Solution: Add basic `robots.txt` file to ask search engines to stay away
and please don't save info. I'm concerned that, like `publicWebHosting`
redactions, it gives a false sense of privacy, but it seems like this is
probably what most people would want?
Problem: The SSB-About plugin is incompatible with our needs. More info
in the GitHub issue linked below and in the code comments.
Solution: Unfortunately, roll our own alternative to the SSB-About
plugin so that we can be 100% sure that it pulls the latest 'about'
published by an author about themselves and doesn't just skip `false`.
Problem: The `socialFilter()` function wasn't documented and contained a
bug where it wouldn't show your posts when `following = true`. This is
because you usually don't follow yourself, so `following = true` was
basically equivalent to `me = false`.
Solution: Add some documentation and resolve the bug by adding special
handling for when the message is from us *before* passing to the general
implementation for follow/block checking.
Resolves https://github.com/fraction/oasis/issues/155
Resolves https://github.com/fraction/oasis/issues/177
Problem: It's hard to show off Oasis or take screenshots without
respecting the `publicWebHosting` convention. While `publicWebHosting`
lacks a formal specification and I'm a bit confused about what its
boundaries are, it sounds like some of our friends would like to avoid
us publishing any of their content on the public web if we can avoid it.
Solution: Add --public option that turns Oasis into a public web viewer.
This makes it **slightly inconvenient** to see these public posts, but
should absolutely not be mistaken for a privacy guarantee. Only HTTP GET
endpoints are allowed, so random people can't publish or change
settings. The name, avatar, description, content warning, and message
contents are replaced with "Redacted", but again, this is all public
information that we can never provide real privacy for.
Resolves https://github.com/fraction/oasis/issues/48
Problem: We use nosniff to keep the web browser from getting confused
about what kinds of content we're serving in Oasis, but this causes
problems for blob URLs that have arbitrary data.
Solution: Remove nosniff on blob URLs to let the browser figure out what
kind of content we're serving.
Resolves https://github.com/fraction/oasis/issues/138
Problem: The regular space in the sidebar emoji was breaking the line at
a specific viewport width and the emoji were being shown as the wrong
font.
Solution: Use a non-breaking space and `font-family: initial` for
full-color emoji instead of using the system font.
Resolves https://github.com/fraction/oasis/issues/150
Resolves https://github.com/fraction/oasis/issues/153
Problem: The socialFilter was hiding posts published by the user, which
felt weird and uncanny.
Solution: Fix the default so that `{ me }` isn't hidden from a view
unless the model specifically wants that to happen.
Resolves https://github.com/fraction/oasis/issues/156
Problem: The Private and Mentions page didn't have view labels yet, and
Publish should be its own page instead of being at the top of every
page.
Solution: Inspired by @cinnamon-bun's work to add friendly view labels,
plus a new Publish page. This also moves the period selection from the
popular page into the view label, which felt better to me with the
previous `<section>` background. I also tried a different text format
for describing the pages, using a common form and using `<strong>` to
draw attention to any change from "Posts from people you follow, sorted
by recency" which feels like the expected default for most people.
@cinnamon-bun: To me this feels like a fun back-and-forth where I'm
riffing on your work and hoping that you do the same, but if it feels
wrong/rude please let me know. Trying to work on designs with a system
like C4 is super new for me and I wouldn't be surprised if there are
pain points to fix!
Resolves https://github.com/fraction/oasis/issues/160
Problem: There was no way to onboard new users since we couldn't redeem
invites.
Solution: Add basic follow-back invites to the settings page. This takes
an invite string, runs it through invite.accept, and either returns the
error in full *or* redeems the invite quietly.
Cinnamon
Christian Bundy
Joshua Kelly
Jonathan Dahan
Jonathan Dahan
Cinnamon