Why I chose Solid to rewrite my app
I decided to rewrite Flowtide entirely using SolidJS. This article will explain the reasons, technical decisions, and the future of Flowtide.
For context, Flowtide is a New Tab page for Chrome and Firefox that aims to be beautiful and customizable. It is free and open-source software.
I ultimately realized that Flowtide wasn’t doing anything different. It worked like every other New Tab page; clock in the middle, a bookmarks menu, and some sort of background.
With more iteration, I decided the app should be ‘block-based.’ Think of it as a display of organizable, high-quality widgets on every New Tab.
If you don’t like the widget-based approach, I’ve left in some other options. You can choose nightstand mode, which puts the clock and date front and center. If you like easy access to your most commonly visited websites, you can enable Speed Dial, which puts your first 12 bookmarks front and center for quick access.
After planning out the new details and iterating, I decided that if I am rewriting Flowtide, I must design the application to be future-proofed, really fast, and bug-free. These goals ultimately meant I’d have to switch frameworks.
