Raindrop is still very much an experiment and not useful for any day-to-day work. However, it has potential and we need community help to take if further.
Why I like it:
- It is driven by product design. We want an extensible platform, but a strong, simple product design will be driving much of the development.
- It is not trying to be a message service in itself, but collect messages from existing services.
- It is web-based: the default UI is plain HTML/JavaScript/CSS goodness.
- It is frickin awesome to be able to play with your messages: data mine them, and do interesting display things using simple script languages like JavaScript and Python.
- It is open: open source and motivated by the Mozilla Manifesto.
- The Mozilla Messaging team is talented and smart. They are motivated and care about what is best for users.
Dojo's dynamic code loader and Dijit's well-defined methods on widgets have enabled the slick things we are doing with in-place extension editing and updates. JQuery is also included in the page, mostly for extension developers, so you have a choice on what to use, Dojo or JQuery.
While I expect many of the decisions I made about how the front end works might change over time, it has been a joy to make what is there so far.
There is lots to do though. If you want to get involved with the code, check the Hacking page is a good place to get started. There is a screencast of the architecture on the Raindrop home page. There is a Community page too.
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