Deploy mobile apps from Dropbox | Hacker News Reader

Deploy mobile apps from Dropbox

harp.io

39 pointsujeezy24 comments

This looks very similar to my startup's product, Site44: www.site44.com.

I'm not sure I follow the connection to "mobile," though. Some of the examples (like a static blog or landing page) don't sound at all specific to mobile. Can someone explain? Is this general-purpose static hosting, like Site44, or is it something different?

> This looks very similar to [...] www.site44.com.

That was my first thought (site44 is pretty awesome btw). Will Harp do anything more than serve content from a Dropbox folder?

I got an email asking the same question. Without going into specifics here is what I can say at this time.

I have not used site44 so I cant speak in depth about the differences.

I can say Harp will be focused on solving domain specific problems, rather than focusing on the technical solution. This means that we look at the problems developers are having and adapt the Platform to address those needs. I believe strongly that people really just want pain removed from their development process. You can expect Harp to have things like rollbacks, diffs, preview urls, staging and production releases etc. Harp does not just turn a Dropbox directory into a website. We see Dropbox as a great way to get files into the cloud in a way that offers a low barrier of entry for beginners. Dropbox is not tied in any way to our architecture and Harp may support other competing services (or even git) if that appears to be the desire of our users.

Hope this answers your question.

This certainly helps my understanding; thanks for responding.

A mobile accessible interface is a big deal for many. A simple SSH / SFTP / etc connection for file management will suffice, rather than having some proprietary client model restricted to a couple of operating systems.

Just my $0.02

Hey everyone, I'm one of the creators of the Harp Platform. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to address them.

The site is sort of sparse on details. Just gave you my email addr. Can I link this up with my own DNS?

yep. we have CNAME support.

How does it tie in with Cordova?

I'm curious about this as well. Does it handle the build? Does it handle the subtle differences between pure web and Cordova (deviceready vs ready, etc)?

these are precisely the problems we are thinking of. Harp came about from what we learned developing and using PhoneGap. Nothing in the architecture makes Harp a mobile specific platform but these are the use cases that drive the platform.

I noticed you can deploy your "blog" using jekyll. Can I deploy other Flask or Celery app easily with harp.io ?

As a general rule of thumb anything that generates static assets will be a perfect companion for Harp. There are some other goodies too, but we are still experimenting with those features.

I was about to have a conniption, but then I saw this:

> Learn to Program

> We created the absolute best Platform for learning web development. Harp removes all the complexity, and gives you the environment you are already comfortable with.

This is a really awesome idea for getting beginners into mobile app development. PHP did a lot to reduce the barrier to entry for traditional web application development and I think this could have the potential to do the same for mobile.

Looking forward to seeing how this pans out.

Just to be clear, this only supports HTML, CSS and Javascript? So learning to program web applications doesn't include anything with a database or that requires secure access (i.e., authentication/authorization) unless (possibly) something like Parse is used as a backend and no Ruby, Python, PHP or other server-side languages.

I've wanted to tackle this idea forever, it's always seemed like low-hanging fruit. I'm super excited to see someone take it on full-time. Best of luck!

Thanks! Agreed. Dropbox is a significant step forward when it comes to getting assets into the cloud. I think it will make life much easier to be able to iterate on sites within a directory on your file system with no extra bagage.

This is an interesting concept. I'm developing a blogging platform leveraging dropbox—that it's actually powering my website—but I've taken i different approach and I'm parsing on the server the markdown files. I haven't actually thought about using it with static html files, this approach have the benefit of greater flexibility in the type of content you can provide.

This looks awesome. Any way I can get early access? Im working on a project I would love to try this on

Rather than doing a long term private beta. We are gearing up to go directly to a public beta very soon. Those that sign up on the list will be first to be notified when we go public.

The Public folder in my Dropbox is already my Poor Man's CVS, this is a great idea. Best of luck!

This looks like an interesting project ;) I'll definitely check it out.

The site crashes Dolphin on Android 2.2.x

Awesome, can't wait to try this out!

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