Useful as it was, I was never a huge fan of the previous Streamr app, one of the oldest parts of Streamr’s tech stack. From a user perspective, it lacked a central point, and had a lot of fussy, small views hiding much of the functionality behind modal dialogues. Once we launched the Marketplace in May 2018, the disconnect between old and new became very sharp.

Then, of course, there was the front end code. The ageing codebase that the Editor was built on made it increasingly difficult to fix or improve, especially because code for its functionality was mixed in with code for the user interface.

In short, what we had needed to be modernised. And that’s what we’ve tried to do. When we began, these were our initial aims:

Create a single point where we could let users manage their streams, canvases, dashboards, products — and in future, control a Network node, and view income from Marketplace products and Network nodes.

Add a blockchain transaction history view.

Rewrite the front end of the Editor app in React — a Javascript framework, developed originally by Facebook, that is based around modular code blocks.

Improve the usability of the entire app.

For the rewrite of the Editor front end, we were initially considering re-implementing the old UI wholesale — quirks and all. It would have saved development time, but we soon recognised that doing extensive back end work only to end up with an app that looked and worked much the same from the user’s point of view, would have led to a collective meh from the Streamr community come release day. That’s why we also decided to rework the UI and UX, as well as the code.

So what’s changed?

Core

One obvious thing is the name. After we’d implemented all new views to tie the Editor to the Marketplace and all other user files, it became clear we had ended up with something more than what we’d initially planned, and it deserved a better name than just “the user pages”. It is the central point for users of the app, and so Core just seemed right.

These views are a big part of the update, and bring streams, canvases, dashboards, Marketplace products and purchases into a central location where users will land when signing into Streamr.

New views here include canvas tiles, live search and sort for each view, a notification system, a blockchain transaction history, an updated Profile section, and a simple onboarding help system tucked behind the ‘?’ icon.

Future iterations will include features for viewing and controlling performance of Network broker nodes, as well as checking your wallet balance for Marketplace or Network revenue.