Simple Lasts Longer

It'd be excellent if Export/Import has a standard format.

Especially if we see adoption on the Storage Buckets standard, sites will be able to partition up their storage into different concerns. Maybe there's some users data (xdg config[1]), some cache (xdg cache[1]), some app state ([1]), and each can be saved into a different bucket. Then a standard export/import standard would let folks save and load data easily? Maybe in interesting cross-site ways, where we import/export data? https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-...

I was super scared this article was going to glorify an impractical disconnected imo useless "simple." Very glad to see import/export handled; simple, but very much in users power to let connectivity happen, to spread their data, as connected apps have so powerfully let us do.

> They can only last if they’re simple to maintain, otherwise keeping them working becomes tedious and the author eventually gives up.

This, x1000.

I cannot count how many hobby projects I have outright abandoned at the first failure, never to return. The fix may have been simple too! I'll never know, though: the startup effort required to re-contextualize myself with the complex mess I'd made was never worth it at the time, and the longer you let them languish the less-likely you are to return. RIP, projects.

Simple Lasts Longer.

I think many of us run our own NAS or document server or something... or even just an rsync and off-site system. But delivering this to users as a turn-key solution is a challenge. If your role is to just provide software that works together, there are some not-too-difficult solutions out there but still a lot of ways to mess up the replication or keep things from getting pwned. If your role is to provide availability and reliability, the economies of scale and totality of control that a centralized system provides just wins out over an indexing of the user's systems.

EDIT: I missed that your question was specifically about browser access. tbh I think it makes the most sense to deliver the files directly by the server, with maybe some media controls for specific file types but even that is something the browser can basically take care of out-of-the-box.

You've just reminded me of a project I ran into years ago that seems to still be around: https://remotestorage.io/

The library for that seems to support their custom protocol as well as Dropbox and Google Drive these days.

There's also Solid which attempts to do something similar: https://solidproject.org/

Cookie clicker does something similar for importing and exporting saves, and it is an absolute joy to not have to fiddle with accounts and be able to backup your own data. I’d love to see more applications move to this model, it’s very user-friendly.