semaphore/README.md

Pinafore

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

Pinafore is available at pinafore.social. Bleeding-edge releases are at dev.pinafore.social.

See the user guide for basic usage. See the admin guide to troubleshoot instance compatibility issues.

For updates and support, follow us at @pinafore@mastodon.technology.

Browser support

Pinafore supports the latest versions of the following browsers:

• Chrome
• Edge
• Firefox
• Safari

Compatible versions of each (Opera, Brave, Samsung, etc.) should be fine.

Goals and non-goals

Goals

• Support the most common use cases
• Fast even on low-end phones
• Works offline in read-only mode
• Progressive Web App features
• Multi-instance support
• Support latest versions of Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari
• a11y (keyboard navigation, screen readers)

Possible future goals

• Works as an alternative frontend self-hosted by instances
• Android/iOS apps (using Cordova or similar)
• Support Pleroma/non-Mastodon backends
• i18n
• Offline search
• Full emoji keyboard
• Keyboard shortcuts

Non-goals

• Supporting old browsers, proxy browsers, or text-based browsers
• React Native / NativeScript / hybrid-native version
• Full functionality with JavaScript disabled
• Emoji support beyond the built-in system emoji
• Multi-column support
• Admin/moderation panel
• Works offline in read-write mode (would require sophisticated sync logic)

Building

To build Pinafore for production:

npm install
npm run build
PORT=4002 npm start

Docker

To build a docker image for production:

docker build .
docker run -d -p 4002:4002 [your-image]

Now Pinafore is running at localhost:4002.

Pinafore requires Node.js v8+.

Developing and testing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for how to run Pinafore in dev mode and run tests.

Changelog

For a changelog, see the GitHub releases.