[kentonv]

Thanks for the feedback.

The connection problem sounds like it may be a bug in Jupyter, or the Sandstorm Jupyter package, rather than Sandstorm itself. It would be great if you could file a bug on the package: https://github.com/jparyani/ipython/issues

Usually these kinds of issues are solved by a refresh, though that's obviously not great UX.

> and getting back how? Remember a link? A bookmark?

Go back to: https://oasis.sandstorm.io

All your stuff is listed when you log in.

[jegoodwin3]

Almost certainly -- and therein lies a problem for you. There is an ambiguity between who owns the tab -- you or Jupyter app? The user of course will think of you and the app as the same thing. If you let Jupyter throw up a message saying 'you're disconnected' the user will infer that they are disconnected from you.

It's not clear the user is wrong btw -- why does a mis-behaving, buggy app, throw me into offline mode? Is it just Jupyter that is offline, or the whole of sandstorm? The message says the tab is. And I can still see components of sandstorm. Of course, I bet if switch to another app it will heal itself -- or will it? Most users won't think of that (or a refresh, or a CTRL+F5, or looking at the debug console for a hint etc.)

So my challenge to you is to explain how the offline/online model works, in a way the user can understand. I suppose big organizations like Google just solve this problem by not hosting buggy apps in the first place. :) :)

It is probably worth your while, from an adoption standpoint, to 'take ownership' of a few key apps and treat their bugs as your bugs -- I would be showing this to coworkers tomorrow if this had worked better, and it probably isn't your fault. They are keen on Jupyter and this is the best delivery platform I've seen for that app. Sharing jupyter notebooks in an enterprise setting could be your killer app -- they contain private data, and a public cloud won't work in many use cases, but most enterprises won't have enough of a constituency of scientists and engineers and statisticians to want to host a notebook server with 'front line' support. We're in the carpet cluster days here...

[kentonv]

> 'take ownership' of a few key apps and treat their bugs as your bugs

Actually, we plan to do something like that! Though, Jupyter isn't part of the initial set -- our most popular apps are Wekan, Etherpad, Rocket.Chat, and Davros, so we'll be focusing on those.

[jegoodwin3]

That's good to hear and I see why those would be popular. I'm a bit surprised that a kanban board is so important.

I'll put in my vote for replacing Wekan with Jupyter -- it's more strategic to win mindshare outside the closed circle of developers. The average unsophisticated user who just wants apps, your target market, doesn't want their very own kanban board. A photo album yes. I speculate your early adopters are predominantly developers themsleves and that's why it's popular. It does fit my comment about private data being an important use case for you, of course.

Sharing homework assignments or spreadsheets of data would be more strategic for you, imho. It could help you break into the 'educational shared docs' submarket -- every school I know uses google docs right now for convenience. And don't forget homeschoolers, and teachers setting up courseware sites. I would think the educational market would be key for you to gain mindshare and grow beyond the community of early-adopter developers.

Anyway, best of luck. This is some really good work you are doing.