Pinafore - Alternative web client for Mastodon

[jdaviescoates]

An alternative web client for Mastodon, focused on speed and simplicity.

https://pinafore.social/
https://github.com/nolanlawson/pinafore

I prefer this interface to the standard Mastodon one. It's possible to simply login to and use it at https://pinafore.social/ but it'd be nicer to self-host

Looks like it's a Node app and already has Docker support so I'm assuming it'll be easy to package.

[timconsidine]

@jdaviescoates as per other thread, first packaging attempt went well.
For info of others, then I trashed it by accident.
Will re-package and make it a repo on git.cloudron.io

[timconsidine]

@jdaviescoates Pinafore now packaged for Cloudron and available from https://git.cloudron.io/timconsidine/pinafore-for-cloudron

Not an artful packaging. Maybe could be made more efficient image. But seems to be working.

[jdaviescoates]

Excellent, thanks @timconsidine!

Perhaps @staff could take a look to dot the i's and cross the t's and see if we can get it into the app store

[girish]

@timconsidine awesome! One thing is you don't need to have a copy of the pinafore source in the packaging repo. Instead, just adjust the Dockerfile to curl the tarball from github . For example, like https://git.cloudron.io/cloudron/peertube-app/-/blob/master/Dockerfile#L17

[timconsidine]

@girish thanks - will check this out

[timconsidine]

@girish thanks again for the tip.
I have changed my repo to that approach.
https://git.cloudron.io/timconsidine/pinafore-for-cloudron.git
If you have a moment, do let me know if it now follows best practice.
Builds and deploys ok (for me).

[girish]

@timconsidine nice!

It looks like this is just a static app. Do you know if the upstream already provides a built "bundle" ? If so, I wonder if it's worth publishing this as an app or should we try to ask people to just download the bundle and upload it to surfer ?

Thoughts?

[timconsidine]

@girish the simplest approach is best, so maybe put it in surfer.
I didn't think of that.
And I didn't look too carefully.
Just liked the look of it.
Will look more deeply.

[robi]

@girish that won't help with updates and app store availability.

Do you plan to keep a running list of apps one can install manually into surfer/lamp/wp etc?

[girish]

@robi said in Pinafore - Alternative web client for Mastodon:

@girish that won't help with updates and app store availability.

yes, that's true.

Also, it seems there is no way to lock down this app - https://github.com/nolanlawson/pinafore/issues/35 . This essentially makes it available for public use. We should probably wait till that is fixed.

[robi]

@girish it seems that won't happen without a PR to get this going.

There are many ways to "lock it down" if necessary..

We can always set up basic/realm auth via the webserver it runs on, or use a small ldap front end to gate access.

Not sure this is a big concern though as most apps we have run on subdomains (CNAMEs) and those don't get a lot of traffic from bots/scanners etc.

Besides, you still have to log into the social network, the client is just the app UI. Hence minimal risk.

[jdaviescoates]

@robi said in Pinafore - Alternative web client for Mastodon:

Besides, you still have to log into the social network, the client is just the app UI. Hence minimal risk.

yeah, you actially login to a masto instance, can't do anything on pinafore without doing that, so nothing really to lock down

[timconsidine]

@girish said in Pinafore - Alternative web client for Mastodon:

it seems there is no way to lock down this app

I was bit concerned too at first.
But as you have to log into a Mastodon instance, I concluded that there is not much security risk about someone else reading my feed.
As it's federated content, I think the only real issue is the privacy aspect of who I am following (maybe who is following me). And we're relying on Mastodon security to manage these aspects.

There is however a risk of a personal Pinafore instance being used by anyone for their feed, effectively increasing the traffic and resources needed by the instance. Is this a concern? I'm not sure.

Security by obscurity (nobody finding the instance) is usually a poor approach. But often it's sufficient

Is it enough to add some basic HTTP auth to the instance as improvement on relying on obscurity ?

[timconsidine]

@timconsidine seems like my custom package is copying unnecessary files into the deployment. Just FYI to anyone bothered. I will look at fixing this.