There is an attempt to capture the vision of the data browser in the mashlib readme
- The data browser should be a complete web-based operating system for any new computer or data store.
- You should be able to set the data browser up for any existing folders you have full of things like photos and music, and it should let you listen to them, look at them, and share them very flexibly with anyone in the world.
- The data browser should be modular, loading new code modules in real time as a function of a user’s preferences for handling different types of data with different new data browser applets, be it finance, fitness, or fishing.
- The data browser should allow people to create, bit by bit, a web of social linked data of their work and their play, and their lives.
This is a project I’m personally quite invested in as I use it for a lot of my life. When i need apps in a new area I tend to make a new pane, so that it can connect to all the other panes already made. Exciting that others are interested in taking it to a new level. Its an open source project that MIT and later Inrupt have put a certain amount of effort into. Very interested to discuss here various directions for it to go.
One direction is fixing bugs, make the existing UI more consistent, adding other ways of doing things you can only do with drag and drop.
Another direction is breaking the repo into a repo per pane, so we can manage issues for them
Another direction may be looking at a complete parallel re-implementation of it aimed at mobile first.