I'm a software engineer and founder with over five years of experience in both startups and large enterprises.
I have a proven track record of building successful products from scratch, as well as building and maintaining large-scale infrastructure (including backend microservices development and scalable deployments).
I am seeking new opportunities in New York City, especially with startups, and I am open to relocation.
Thank you for bring this up. This is exactly what WebCatalog is built for. Every app you install through WebCatalog works just like a Mac app so you can switch between them using Alt+Tab.
For each app, if you need to, you can divide the app into workspaces (similar to how Slack workspaces) which you can switch between using Cmd+1, Cmd+2, etc.
Yes, it's built with Electron. But I don't think there's anything wrong with the framework. Plenty of amazing apps are built with Electron, and they're fast and snappy. Without Electron, we'd never be able to bring WebCatalog to all major desktop platforms.
Certainly, if the built-in "install-as-app" of major browsers work well for you, then it's great.
WebCatalog tries to make the concept simpler and more accessible to average users. Most people are familiar with the concepts of apps and app stores so our vision is to build an app store for web apps that gives users easy access to desktop apps (many not available elsewhere). A user doesn't need to know what is difference between a website or an app, they just need to open WebCatalog and install the apps they want like they usually do on their phone. For a power user, this might sound unnecessary, but this is proven wrong as there are plenty of apps like "X for Gmail" or "Y for Netflix" on Mac App Store and Microsoft Store. It is also the reason why companies like Notion and Slack build web-wrapper desktop apps.
One more point, we're not only letting users install chromeless window apps. If you give it a try, for example, with the Gmail app on WebCatalog [1], you can switch between multiple accounts using workspaces, set the app as the default email client, attach it to the menu bar or taskbar, etc. They're real apps with executables, not just bash scripts. And we're trying to integrate the web apps with your system and make it feel native-like as much as possible. And we're going to add many more features soon. In other words, we're trying to bring the experience that web-wrapper apps like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Notions offer to every web app.
I've been bootstrapping WebCatalog since 2017. I and many people around the world use it every day. It's a well-tested idea. It's only now that we decide to launch the product widely.
Looking at the size of your catalog I'm going to guess that you didn't work with all those sites to distribute their apps through your site. Maybe I'm not understanding how this works, but wouldn't you need some sort of license to do this? If someone downloads the Gmail app from your catalog, but it doesn't work the same as the plain web client, they would probably blame Google and not you. I can't imagine Google would like that.
Hi Peter,
I am a Vietnamese student studying in the US with the F-1 visa. Recently, together with my
American partner we opened a startup using Stripe Atlas.
The visa doesn't allow me to work in the US so I'll go back to Vietnam in the next four months to work on the product. But when I go back to school, what is the best way for me to work legally? I know I can apply for OPT but it would take me up to three months to get approved. Is there a better solution?
There really isn't unless you wanted to abandon the F-1 visa altogether and move to the O-1 which would allow you to work full-time and go to school part-time.
WebCatalog automatically compiles web apps with nativefier and publishes them using Travis-CI. The binaries can be downloaded directly from GitHub Releases with nice installers so normal users can easily install. It's still new and I hope you guys can give me some feedbacks, submit apps, contribute on GitHub, etc.
Remote: Yes, Hybrid preferred
Willing to relocate: Yes (NYC or SF)
Technologies: Typescript, Javascript, React, Next.js, Python, Rust | Full-stack, frontend, backend, infrastructure
Résumé/CV: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QZhoQ54tPk19hw2tv65JiLyaTHR...
Email: [email protected]
I'm a software engineer and founder with over five years of experience in both startups and large enterprises.
I have a proven track record of building successful products from scratch, as well as building and maintaining large-scale infrastructure (including backend microservices development and scalable deployments).
I am seeking new opportunities in New York City, especially with startups, and I am open to relocation.