blog: xesite in app stores post

Signed-off-by: Christine Dodrill <me@christine.website>

blog/xesite-app-stores-2021-06-26.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,62 @@
+---
+title: "christine.website is now on the Microsoft Store"
+date: 2021-06-26
+author: sephiraloveboo
+tags:
+ - release
+ - Windows11
+---
+
+# christine.website is now on the Microsoft Store
+
+This website has been a progressive web app [for a long
+time](https://christine.website/blog/progressive-webapp-conversion-2019-01-26).
+This means that you can install my blog to your phone as if it was a normal app
+via the share menu in Safari on iOS or via other native prompts on other
+browsers. However, this is not enough. In the constant pursuit of advancement I
+have found a way to make this an even more seamless user experience. I have
+released this website on the Microsoft store and you can download it
+[here](https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/p/christinewebsite/9nn7zx20jl85?activetab=pivot:overviewtab).
+
+> Science isn't about *why* - it's about *why not*. *Why* is so much of our
+> science dangerous? Why not *marry* safe science if you love it so much? In
+> fact, why not invent a special safety door that won't hit you in the butt on
+> the way out, because *you are fired!* Not you, test subject. You're doing
+> fine.
+
+- Cave Johnson, Portal 2
+
+This will allow me to experiment with push notifications in the future. People
+have asked for a way to be notified of new posts to my blog and I want to
+experiment with push notifications using service workers. It may be a while
+until I end up getting to a point where I can do that, but I want to start
+laying the ground work for fully native integration on your machines.
+
+As for why I'm doing this, that's a good question. Microsoft said that Windows
+11 was an open platform, and if it really is an open platform then they'll allow
+anyone to publish things to their store. I was able to get my existing website
+to be published as an app and I will probably use that model going forward with
+other projects in the future. I've also started the process of getting [Mara:
+Sh0rk of Justice](https://xe.github.io/mara-sh0rk-of-justice/) published in a
+similar way.
+
+I have also been prototyping an Android app that is currently in review on the
+Google Play store, but if you want to test drive it now, you can download the
+APK
+[here](https://cdn.christine.website/file/christine-static/apk/christine.website-1.0.3.1-1.apk).
+It is currently just a webview pointing to my website and that's all it really
+needs to be. The rest of the magic will happen in the background after you
+explicitly opt-in to push notifications or whatever once I figure out how to do
+that with a server written in Rust. I may have to cave and write the push
+notification server pusher part in Node or something, I don't really know for
+sure yet.
+
+I am working on making the code for the Android app open source and will post it
+[here](https://github.com/Xe/xesite_android) once I figure out all of the files
+I need to gitignore properly.
+
+Until then, enjoy a taste of the future! I will look into making this work on
+iOS and macOS, but those require a few more steps that are really annoying due
+to my Apple developer account being in an odd state due to me being an ex-pat.
+Apparently they won't let you use a Canadian address to pay for things with a US
+account. Annoying.