Also, it seems like Gaia is the only option for storage right? I’m sure you guys are working on it, but I wanted to leave some feedback that it is confusing for noobs: A friend of mine installed Blockstack in front of me last week, and felt overwhelmed. And was disappointed that he couldn’t actually “do anything” with the app.
Bug:
You may want to test that **white screen problem above
Questions:
Do you have plans to make storage easier? And if so, when might that begin?
I also just had a difficult time finding the blockstack version number. The app doesn’t have an “about” like most apps have. I imagine this would be helpful for your debugging.
Regarding the white screen you’re getting after selecting storage, have you tried hard refreshing your browser? Do you see any errors in the console?
Regarding your storage options, each user has control over where their data gets hosted. You can select default storage (Gaia) or a storage provider of your choice (“Choose another storage provider”).
We are trying to improve documentation, so if there is anything you would like to see documented in regards to storage, please let us know.
I understand that I could setup Gaia and that might fix it. Still Gaia seems like a pain for the casual user to setup. It looks like it’ll take 20+ minutes of setup time. Is there something easier coming soon? It was cool when Dropbox was an option (even though it defeats the point of decentralized storage, it allowed an easy step to building and testing the apps). Overall, my feedback is more about the UX/UI challenge with Gaia, and yes this blank screen might be affecting others and hurting your conversion of new developers.
My advice (and just take it for what it’s worth) is to do some usability testing sometime soon. If new user conversion is important (which my guess is that it is important), it’d be helpful for you to watch new users setup blockstack for the first time. Assuming you’re not already doing this?
Before I had several storage options (I use Storj), for some time and now only Gaia available. I would like to start with Gaia, but documentation is scary for me…
Thanks for your feedback, Chris. We are currently working on improving UX/UI and making the on-boarding flow, initial setup of identity and storage, more straight forward for users. There is another thread that touches on the points you brought up here as well. CC @jeffd
