Release 2021.10.2

This release is a major overhaul of Patchfox. It is laying the necessary groundwork for Patchfox to support multiple backends — nodejs-based ssb-server, browser-ssb server, go-ssb server — and become a viable main client.

There is comprehensive information about the ROADMAP on SSB, and the tasks have been broken into discreet issues on Github.

Because there is so much going on, the release notes will give at a glance information only.

Revamped UI with theme support

Every single package has been reworked to support the new design language used in Patchfox. You can now use the little palette at the end of the main navigation bar to switch among the available themes. Your selected theme will be remembered.

For the developer-curious among you, I replaced the old Spectre2 CSS + Augmented UI CSS based layout with Tailwind CSS + DaisyUI.

Support Multiple Identities / Connections

This release adds support for using multiple identities and connections with Patchfox. The settings package has been enhanced to allow you to add as many identities as you want.

An account switcher is provided in the top-right corner of the UI. Selecting an identity there will open a new tab using that identity.

Developers can now use ssb.platform to detect what is the current running backend, and use the supportedPlatforms property in the package declaration to make sure the package only loads for supported platforms.

Be aware that the only supported backend is nodejs-ssb at the moment. Trying to add a go-ssb or browser-ssb identity will work, but connecting to them will not work as expected since the packages have not been patched to handle them. Baby steps, baby steps...

Fixes & Improvements

• Made packages more backend agnostic by removing direct calls to nodejs-ssb-only features. For cases where this was not possible, made sure they detect what is the current backend before attempting to use such features.
• Provided ways for package developers to flag which backends their package supports, and also detect the running backend at runtime.
• Removed hardcoded occurrences of localhost to fetch blobs. Now it uses the same host and port as the remote in settings.
• Small fix to post compose lack of spinner