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v0.4.1 — say less, and show what it is for

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@elkojo elkojo released this 06 Sep 13:05
· 19 commits to main since this release

Still public beta. No security review, no Czech eIDAS counsel review. The timestamps are real
and independently verifiable; treat the app itself as unfinished.

Live at https://elkojo.github.io/xNotary/

Less text on every screen, and a section explaining what the thing is actually for. No behaviour
changed and no certificate format moved.

The maturity warning is now one gesture away

It used to be a banner on every screen. It is now behind the Public beta marker in the top
bar: hover it, or focus it with the keyboard, or tap it on a phone, and the full notice appears.

The wording is unchanged and it is not going anywhere — it comes off when the security review and
the Czech eIDAS counsel review are actually done, not before. What changed is that it no longer
competes with the screen you came to use.

Roughly 500 words came off the working screens

Nothing that carried information was cut; what went was repetition and words doing no work.

  • Signatures opened with ~150 words explaining two choices most people never have to make —
    whether to sign the document or its Certificate 1, and how parallel and sequential signing
    differ. Both are now foldable, full text one click away. The screen is a heading, two drop zones
    and two summaries.
  • The two notices about trust lists became one, and the four verdicts on Verify are about
    half their former length. "Do not sign" is now the emphasised part of a mismatch rather than a
    trailing sentence.
  • The same privacy fact appeared three times on one screen. Once is enough.

How it works was deliberately left long. It is the page people open because they want the
detail, and every shortened screen links to it.

What people use it for

A new section on How it works, five foldable examples: a contract signed in two countries with
no shared platform, a confidential record dated before you disclose it, proving what you
delivered, preserving a record before it changes, and a release anyone can still check in ten
years.

It also spells out what a signature adds that a timestamp cannot. A trust provider checks a
person's identity before issuing their certificate, so a signed document carries a name someone
stood behind rather than one typed into a form — and Certificate 2 records that name with the
authority that issued it.

That claim stays conditional throughout, because xNotary accepts self-signed certificates too and
flags them as vouched for by nobody. xNotary reports what a certificate claims and points you at
the check that confirms it. It does not verify identity itself, and does not say it does.

Fixed

A file name shown in the label column was being uppercased by the style meant for labels.
cert1-countersigned.pdf displayed as CERT1-COUNTERSIGNED.PDF — which nobody can copy, because
file names are case-sensitive.

144 offline tests, and Flow A driven end to end through a real browser against the production
build.