Guidelines

Guidelines

These are some loose points which enhance the experience of using unhosted apps and remoteStorage. If you follow them you’re extra awesome and your users will be happy. :)

unhosted apps & other apps using remotestorage

• open-source your app and freely license it. While you don’t need to, that way everyone learns and can help.
• ideally use the connect widget, otherwise make sure to explain, and enable enter to log in
• use existing, generic categories as much as possible (documents, contacts, pictures, …), not one just for your app
• use AppCache for offline capability (easily done by deploying via 5apps)
• cache content localStorage
• use https for secure connections (startssl)
• on sign out, notify people that they are still signed in to their storage. Provide a link so they can sign out there also.
• if you want to track users, do it opt-in – and then use Piwik rather than giving the data to Google
• for live-collaboration, you can use Socket.io as temporary hub. friends#unhosted is looking to pass messages fully distributed.

remoteStorage providers

• give people easy addresses, like user@storage.com (rather than user-storage@storage.provider.com)
• ideally also provide email at that address to clear up any confusion
• handle user addresses case-insensitive (ref https://github.com/RemoteStorage/remoteStorage.js/issues/123 )
• persist tokens, an app should only need to be authorized once
• use the token list as an app dashboard, with icons and links to the apps
• combine login + auth in one step to make the flow quicker
• prefill the username field from the webfinger request