I’m excited to finally announce that I’ve started the process of integrating my existing apps with webnative via Zero Data Wrap. This one was easiest to start with because of the simple folder structure.
You can sign in with your Fission account by entering something like boris@fission.codes.
Would love to hear any feedback about the integration as I’m not sure if all the parts are put together properly.
The fund button/system wasn’t built for this setup so for the moment I just changed it so that when signing in with Fission you can create without any documents limits
To introduce the app a bit, you can think of Launchlet as a userscript/userstyle manager: create a Recipe with some JavaScript or CSS and give it a name to access it in a launcher interface. You can run it as a bookmarklet or as a browser extension. I recorded a demo walking through how to use it Launchlet + Fission integration on Vimeo
I’m also doing some soul searching with my funding model and I’m leaning towards scrapping the ‘sponsorware’ approach, and try making it open source from the start. Still on the fence but the repo is now public:
Man. I like the email based usernames. I tried it with the fission demo account attached to the browser I happen to be in, and auth and permission was fast and just worked.
You know me, I’m always up for supporting and experimenting with how to get app creators paid.
I clearly have to spend more time with the guide. Coming in to an empty space without being able to do any of the cool things you show was tough to get started.
Maybe ship with things that the extension can do on specific websites, too?
I was originally thinking of integrating the app with an aggregated listing of scripts/styles. But you’re totally right that it’s an onboarding anti-pattern to throw people into a blank slate. I’m trying to think more about guided entry into apps, but it’s not natural for me…
Yes. Launchlet tries to fix usability issues in *monkey by
liberating the data from browser extension containers, replacing it with 0data
presenting the interface via an open website, not an ‘extension page’
combining of scripts and styles in the same form, which seems to be rare for some reason
removing ‘save’ buttons
removing friction from the document CRUDing and filtering
creating paths towards code reuse and hopefully end-user programming, composing larger ideas from smaller parts (I’m not aware of anything comparable in this sense)
There’s also a larger vision about app customization which we started talking about once, but it’s not so developed at the moment.
Hey, this is super cool! I wrote a couple of recipes in Firefox, went over to Chrome, and they were there waiting for me. It all worked perfectly!
I can already imagine a few places where the extension could be really useful. For example, some blogs I visit go a little overboard with making all of their fonts light gray, to the point where I can hardly read them. I’m already opening the developer tools to change the font color to black. The Launcher extension would make this process much faster.
Thanks for trying it out, brave soul, I appreciate it! And I’m glad everything worked. If you need help with setting up the extension let me know, you can get it from the marketplaces or the source:
@bgins I’m ready to update the app so that it writes to /private/Apps/rCreativ/launchlet instead of /private/launchlet. I don’t want to break your setup so can you please confirm when you have been able to export your data (by running Export JSON (beta) from the app launcher in the bottom right), or rename the folder yourself? There may potentially be permissions mismatch issues if I just swap out the path so please sign out unless you’re curious to see what happens
The recipe list was indeed empty. I checked for the empty state in Firefox and Chrome, then imported my data in Chrome. The import worked in Chrome and my recipes showed up in Firefox shortly after. Stayed signed in the whole time. So, smooth upgrade all around!
Success! The permissions are actually identical so I guess I didn’t need to be so cautious… You might want to clear the /private/launchlet folder since it’s no longer used. Thanks so much for your patience and energy to try all this
I currently have an import/export JSON command but for all the recipes at once. I’m not aware of a standard, I have the impression that each user-script/style manager has different formats. I could write converters for the popular ones?
There is a general fear I have of ‘sharing recipes’ that someone will unsuspectedly import malicious code… As the developer, I’m not sure what’s the most responsible way to deal with that. But I also hope to have a public listing where people can contribute their recipes.
Staying signed in and will try the app again when you have made the switch.