That is great information. As an early adopter one should clearly know - be able to glean quick insight to - exactly what other parts of the ecosystem or requirements are needed.
Using the term ‘Solid App’ makes it a subset of the world of apps. It is a new term that newcomers have never heard of, and now they have to determine how that slices with all the examples of app categorizations (and there are more) that you just mentioned.
I was preparing another response when you posted, so I just copy that below:
@jeffz regarding confusion… We had the same understanding on what “apps” mean, previously. But the Solid Project website is telling an entirely different tale.
Developer drill-down:
Landingpage ➜ For Developers ➜ Build Solid Web Apps ➜ Build your first Solid Web App:
“This tutorial assumes you are familiar with modern JavaScript and its ecosystem […] and are interested in building one that reads and writes data to a Solid Pod.” The entire code walkthrough gives no clarity how a Solid (Web) App is related to the common understanding of “apps”.
- Impression: Solid Web Apps are NodeJS apps that use the Solid web framework…
Landingpage ➜ For Developers ➜ Build Solid Web Apps ➜ Check out the existing Solid apps:
This time apps is not capitalized. On the ‘Use Solid Apps’ page there is a hopeful start: " You wrote a Solid-compatible app that’s not listed? Feel free to add it to the list."
But then the list, as far as I can see, only contains apps that were built from the ground up with Solid in mind. There are no integration libraries, plugins, addons, extensions to existing projects / products out in the wild.
- Impression: Yes indeed, this is an alternative framework than what I am using now.
Landingpage ➜ For Developers ➜ Tools and libraries overview:
Here you find Solid specific tools and Solid specific libraries, but once again none of the tools and libraries that people are familiar with. No integrations with existing systems.
- Impression: Wow, I have to learn an entire new ecosystem to stick a full-blown app together.
Landingpage ➜ Implement Solid
Implement Solid sounds interesting, BUT: “Contact us on our email to state your need”. Full stop.
- Impression: Ah, this is probably a .org site driven by a business that develops the flagship products for this framework.
User drilldown
Costs me too much time to expand now, but the perception is the same developers will get.
FAQ
Here there is an entirely new set of confusions to address. It makes everything Solid.
- Solid users ➜ Is that different than just “users”?
- When using Solid… ➜ I am not really using Solid, I just use a solid-compliant app
And more things that do not really make it easier.