WebXDC and PWA as news readers

A branded news reader specific to chosen resources.

Preface

Mr. Luke Smith has conveyed an idea by which a news reader would be realized into an installable software (i.e. app) which would be specific for a given news site.

🧲 How we can reach Normies with RSS

Solution

This idea can be realized with WebXDC, PWA, or F-Droid.

Reason

There are people who do not desire to understand new software (e.g. news reader), and rather have a specific software (i.e. app) for each specific site that they visit.

WebXDC

Originally developed in Freiburg, Germany for Delta Chat over SMTP, and now supported by Cheogram and monocles chat over XMPP.

WebXDC is an effort to explore "private software", essentially 'portable' HTML software (i.e. web apps) through which people can interact in any number of fashions, regardless of the client-server paradigm, e.g. over E2EE chat and offline.

WebXDC homesite

PWA

Similarly to WebXDC, PWA (progressive web application) is an HTML software that can be installed on a device as a standalone application.

The advantage over native applications is that PWA does not require separate bundling or distribution for different platforms.

The software NewsAgain of Mr. Lars Windolf could be the nominee for that task.

NewsAgain homesite
NewsAgain instance

While PWA is indeed applicable for this task, it might be more efficient to create a PWA software which would handle WebXDC software, due to commercial interests that try to suppress RSS.

F-Droid

F-Droid is an installable catalogue of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) applications for the Android platform.

The client makes it easy to browse, install, and keep track of updates on your device.

F-Droid also features essential software, such as AdAway, that were unfairly censored by commercial stores.

F-Droid homesite

WebXDC handler

A native software to handle WebXDC software.

PWA handler

A native software to handle PWA software.

Native

A native software which would do the task of news reader, as initially described in this article.

Albeit, this is practical, it is probably the least efficient fashion for this task, due to the added effort in the sense of installation and regulation.

Native software would require to be registered over F-Droid; or to create an F-Droid instance which would even further require people to add its URL to the list of repositories of their F-Droid installation in order to download it.

If someone would decide to do it, then the framework that should probably be utilized for that task be Flutter.

Flutter is an open source framework for building natively compiled, multi-platform applications from a single codebase.
Flutter homesite

Post script

It is interesting, that most of the people who are involved with the projects that are mentioned in this article, are Germans or related to Germans.

This is good!

Resources

NLnet; WebXDC XMPP
XEP-0491: WebXDC
Berlin XMPP Meetup - Stephen Paul Weber: What is WebXDC?

Related

Interactive SVG