| Time | Nick | Message |
|---|---|---|
| 10:03 | erikos | #TOPIC Sugarizing of Web apps (by Lucian Branescu Mihaila) |
| 10:03 | #LINK http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Webified | |
| 10:03 | #LINK http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/webified/ | |
| 10:05 | passes over to lucian__ | |
| 10:06 | bernie | I'm around |
| 10:06 | lucian__ | I'm very sorry abou that, I've just had a kernel panic |
| 10:06 | it's the second this week, i'm getting worried | |
| 10:06 | i blame the 3G dongle drivers | |
| 10:06 | erikos | lucian__, no problem |
| 10:07 | bernie, hey! | |
| 10:07 | lucian__ | erikos: anyway, i was about to say that the offline feature outlined in that ticket has very little overlap with my project |
| 10:07 | erikos | lucian__, yup, right |
| 10:07 | lucian__ | erikos: it's basically caching bookmarked pages |
| 10:07 | erikos | lucian__, I mean the global bookmark part - there are some ideas from eben hidden in the ticket |
| 10:08 | lucian__, I will move it over after the meeting | |
| 10:08 | lucian__ | sure |
| 10:08 | should I do a #startmeeting ? or what? | |
| 10:08 | erikos | lucian__, maybe you want to start to give an overview about what the project is good for |
| 10:08 | lucian__, no logs are already running | |
| 10:09 | lucian__, a highlevel overview would be nice | |
| 10:09 | lucian__ | alright. my project aims to allow Browse to create specialised copies of itself |
| 10:09 | erikos | lucian__, what can a user do with this |
| 10:09 | lucian__ | the user can click 'create ssb' and a new activity is created for that specific website |
| 10:10 | that website is the homepage and there is a new toolbar called 'customize' | |
| 10:10 | this toolbar will contain buttons to allow the user to further customize the activity | |
| 10:11 | erikos | the new toolbar then only appears in the 'clone'? |
| 10:11 | lucian__ | erikos: yes |
| 10:11 | erikos | lucian__, ok |
| 10:12 | lucian__ | anyway, the customisation done to the SSB is stored as activity data |
| 10:12 | when the user has done more extensive customisation, they can create a new SSB (from inside the current SSB) | |
| 10:13 | created SSB bundles can be shared or posted at activities.sl.o | |
| 10:13 | erikos | what are the possible customizations? |
| 10:13 | a new icon for example? | |
| 10:13 | lucian__ | adding bookmarklets, userscripts (greasemonkey), userstyles (custom css), icon, title |
| 10:14 | bookmarklets would en up on the SSB toolbar as buttons | |
| 10:14 | erikos | so in the end - customizing a web application to be a native application (activity) |
| 10:14 | lucian__ | userscripts can alter behaviour (add offline to wikipedia, add sugar-specific functionality, etc.) |
| 10:15 | erikos: yes, that's the point | |
| 10:15 | erikos | lucian__, what are the benefits in just having - lets say bookmarks in browse |
| 10:15 | lucian__, each page has it's icon already normaly | |
| 10:15 | lucian__ | erikos: bookmarks as opposed to SSBs? |
| 10:16 | erikos | lucian__, well yeah - from the user point of view |
| 10:16 | lucian__ | erikos: there's a much more clear separation between the browser and the web application |
| 10:16 | erikos | lucian__, I mean besides the customization - I can have it all in one app, I guess |
| 10:16 | lucian__ | GMail can be made to behave like a native email client |
| 10:16 | and there's the sharing | |
| 10:16 | erikos | lucian__, I just ask provocatly |
| 10:16 | lucian__ | erikos: yes, i figured |
| 10:17 | i think walterbender made a GMail activity | |
| 10:17 | erikos | yes, right |
| 10:17 | lucian__ | with this SSB creator, users can make their own GMail.xo and share it |
| 10:17 | walterbender | lucian: my gmail activity was a hand-built instance of what you are making happen with a button push :) |
| 10:18 | lucian__ | walterbender: yes, mostly |
| 10:18 | erikos | what I like about it - it is another way for kids to start customizing the system |
| 10:18 | walterbender | we have a green light from Google, BTW, to package all of their google apps if we care to do so |
| 10:18 | lucian__ | walterbender: i intend to do just that :D |
| 10:19 | as soon as I get a workaround working for that pyxpcom bug and Gears works, even offline :) | |
| 10:19 | walterbender | lucian: is there an intention that people would add their apps to ALSO? |
| 10:19 | ^ALSO^ASLO | |
| 10:19 | lucian__ | walterbender: yes, i'm trying to make that possible |
| 10:19 | tomeu | walterbender: but those aren't free software, right? |
| 10:19 | FGrose | (the Activity Library) |
| 10:20 | walterbender | tomeu: the wrappers are free software... |
| 10:20 | erikos | what about space constraints? or let's say the problem of always copying all of the bundle |
| 10:20 | tomeu | walterbender: so everything in the client side is free software? |
| 10:20 | erikos | tomeu, there was once the intention to make making a web app more simple |
| 10:21 | lucian__ | erikos: i though of that. in the end bundles shouldn't be much larger than Browse itself |
| 10:21 | tomeu | erikos: I think there's still that intention |
| 10:21 | walterbender | tomeu: I assume so, but maybe there are corner cases |
| 10:21 | erikos | tomeu, getting more of the stuff in browse.xo into hulahop |
| 10:21 | tomeu, ok | |
| 10:21 | lucian__ | tomeu: the .js sent to the client isn't. it's a bit blurr |
| 10:21 | erikos | tomeu, might be a good moment to think about that |
| 10:21 | lucian__, ok, cool | |
| 10:21 | tomeu | erikos: or from browse into sugar-toolkit |
| 10:21 | erikos | tomeu, ok, or that |
| 10:22 | tomeu | erikos: wade sent a plan about that |
| 10:22 | lucian__ | it would help with space if browser.py and friends were part of sugar |
| 10:22 | erikos | tomeu, ok, good |
| 10:23 | lucian__ | i still need to keep an eye out for space when bundling the gecko profile |
| 10:23 | erikos | lucian__, right - if as much as possible would be in the toolkit itself |
| 10:26 | lucian, welcome back ;p | |
| 10:26 | walterbender | the wonderful world of 3G? |
| 10:26 | lucian | erikos: got disconnected. my 3G signal isn't very good |
| 10:27 | walterbender: my neighbours upstairs have wifi, i'll have a chat with them | |
| 10:27 | anyway, i still haven't implemented the ssb toolbar | |
| 10:28 | custom CSS and bookmarklets will be easy to implement | |
| 10:28 | walterbender | lucian: are there any concernes re the toolbar? |
| 10:28 | lucian | walterbender: just design concerns |
| 10:28 | it's going to look something like this | |
| 10:28 | walterbender | lucian: maybe we could coerce Eben into designing some icons for you |
| 10:29 | lucian | add bookmarklet, add userscript, add userstyle |separator| bookmarklet buttons |
| 10:29 | i'm a bit worried about icons, though | |
| 10:29 | erikos | walterbender, or gary |
| 10:29 | lucian | should I incorporate the website favicon in the sugar icon? |
| 10:29 | or should I leave all SSB have the same icon by default | |
| 10:30 | erikos | lucian, you mean into the activity icon? |
| 10:30 | lucian | erikos: yes |
| 10:30 | (well, bookmarklet icons as well) | |
| 10:30 | erikos | lucian, the problem is I guess that the sugar icons are only two colored |
| 10:30 | walterbender | lucian: I'd do the former, not the latter. |
| 10:31 | erikos: we could use a simple algorithm to change the colors... | |
| 10:31 | lucian | walterbender: so the Browse icon with the favicon in the middle? |
| 10:31 | erikos | walterbender, yeah, thought about something like that |
| 10:31 | walterbender | erikos: it is more a matter that the fav icon is not likely to be SVG |
| 10:31 | erikos | or maybe - the creator has to do it himself |
| 10:31 | walterbender | erikos: it would be good to give them something reasonable by default |
| 10:31 | erikos | walterbender, would be a nice exercise |
| 10:32 | walterbender | another task for a long airplane flight |
| 10:32 | erikos | walterbender, well there could be an editor in the toolbar to allow that |
| 10:32 | walterbender, or something like that | |
| 10:32 | walterbender | erikos: it would be nicer to make a separate svg editor activity... |
| 10:32 | and a way to import the icon from the Journal | |
| 10:32 | erikos | walterbender, of course |
| 10:33 | walterbender | inkscape :) |
| 10:33 | erikos | heh yeah |
| 10:34 | you never know if it is kernel or 3G | |
| 10:34 | lucian_ | a tiny svg editor that can have an image as a background would be nice |
| 10:34 | erikos: 3G :) | |
| 10:34 | so the user can just follow the contour of the original image | |
| 10:34 | erikos | lucian_, ;p |
| 10:34 | lucian_, yup that is what I had envisioned | |
| 10:35 | bemasc | I think an SVG editor is out-of-scope. Converting the favicon should be possible. |
| 10:35 | walterbender | I really discourage you from adding this level of complexity... |
| 10:35 | lucian_ | bemasc: i wouldn't think of doing it for GSoC |
| 10:35 | bemasc | ok |
| 10:35 | walterbender | not a matter of GSoC or not... it is a matter of adding needless complexity to an already complex activity |
| 10:36 | erikos | walterbender, good point |
| 10:36 | let's build small tools that can work together | |
| 10:37 | walterbender | erikos: the Sugar way of doing things |
| 10:37 | bemasc | A totally automated favicon converter seems worthwhile... and might also be a useful component for other sugarization problems. |
| 10:37 | erikos | walterbender, but the first version of the editor activity could just be a converter |
| 10:37 | bemasc, ^^^ | |
| 10:37 | bemasc | It should certainly be low-priority for lucian_, though. |
| 10:37 | walterbender | bemasc: we could make a crude version pretty quickly |
| 10:38 | bemasc | walterbender: agreed. |
| 10:38 | lucian_ | bemasc: i'm really not even touching that |
| 10:38 | if someone goes and makes an tiny svg editor, great | |
| 10:38 | erikos | lucian, ok, lets focus maybe on the main goals |
| 10:38 | walterbender | I'd vote for an SVG wrapper (with Sugar icon colors) around the bitmap imported |
| 10:38 | erikos | lucian, what you could do is advertising on the ml that it would be a nice thing to have |
| 10:38 | walterbender | as a place to start.. |
| 10:38 | erikos | lucian, and if someone wants to work on it - great |
| 10:39 | lucian_ | walterbender: that should be doable |
| 10:39 | erikos: sure, will do | |
| 10:39 | erikos | ok, lucian - what are your outstanding questions? |
| 10:39 | lucian, I have added you to: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/D[…]admap/0.86#Browse | |
| 10:39 | lucian, i guess that is ok | |
| 10:40 | lucian_ | i'm not sure how I should be storing the bookmarklets |
| 10:40 | they're links, possibly with a description and ideally with an icon | |
| 10:40 | erikos | the global bookmarks? |
| 10:41 | lucian_ | erikos: they don't have to be global, i could persist them in the ssb bundle |
| 10:41 | erikos: should i try to use mozilla's stuff or roll my own (probably json files) | |
| 10:41 | erikos | lucian, ok - what are they from a user point of view? |
| 10:41 | lucian_ | s/json files/.ini files/ |
| 10:41 | erikos | lucian, a bookmark in the classical way? |
| 10:41 | lucian_ | erikos: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookmarklet |
| 10:42 | erikos | looks |
| 10:42 | lucian_ | erikos: they have most of the traits of regular toolbar buttons |
| 10:42 | erikos: they just happen to live on the bookmark bar in most browsers | |
| 10:42 | erikos | lucian, ahhhhh |
| 10:44 | lucian_, json is one option - that is what we do for the sharing bokmarks | |
| 10:44 | lucian_, we store an icon here as well | |
| 10:45 | lucian_ | erikos: yes, i'll have to make a wrapper .svg for this as well |
| 10:46 | my other issue was how to persist session data | |
| 10:46 | the customisations a user does would get stored as session data | |
| 10:46 | and i want to store that in the bundle i create | |
| 10:46 | i'm not sure what the best way for that would be | |
| 10:47 | erikos | ok, let me think a sec |
| 10:49 | hmmm, it should be global data | |
| 10:49 | not session data, right? | |
| 10:49 | as it changes the behavior of the activity itself | |
| 10:50 | lucian_ | erikos: well, yes |
| 10:50 | but afaik the rainbow doesn't let activities do that | |
| 10:50 | erikos | lucian_, maybe this does mean activity versions? |
| 10:51 | lucian_, i mean - we create a new version of the activity I guess | |
| 10:51 | lucian_ | erikos: yes, bemasc compared it to currying in functional languages |
| 10:52 | erikos | oh dear - haskell |
| 10:52 | lucian_ | erikos: since activities are immutable and they save state externally (in the journal) |
| 10:53 | erikos | hmmm |
| 10:56 | lucian_ | erikos: another issue I have right now is that Gears doesn't quite work |
| 10:56 | tomeu pointed me in the right direction for implementing a workaround | |
| 10:57 | (the Gears permission dialog is too small to click the 'allow' button) | |
| 10:57 | erikos | lucian_, so for the activity version stuff - I am not sure how we solve that, yet |
| 10:57 | tomeu | lucian_: btw, you can actually click on the checkbox, you just need to do it in the right pixel row |
| 10:57 | lucian_ | tomeu: heh. i'll try that |
| 10:58 | erikos | tomeu, you did work on gears at one point, or? |
| 11:00 | tomeu | erikos: yup |
| 11:00 | adds one more to the list of people who aren't reading his blog | |
| 11:02 | walterbender | tomeu: I haven't tried your tab patches yet, I have to admit... |
| 11:04 | erikos | tomeu, 19 days old! |
| 11:04 | tomeu, I have forgotten about it already 5 times ;p | |
| 11:05 | tomeu | walterbender: I don't think the user experience should block applying the initial patch. we can only change what the gtk widget allows changing, and any of those changes won't be invasive |
| 11:05 | erikos: hmm, ok, you are off the list for now, but I will test you in the future :p | |
| 11:06 | walterbender: what we'll need is adding stuff, like keybindings, etc | |
| 11:06 | erikos | had luck for today |
| 11:07 | lucian_, tomeu shall I add addons support to the 0.86 roadmap? | |
| 11:07 | lucian_ | erikos: not all firefox extensions can work with Browse |
| 11:07 | erikos | lucian_, tomeu at least for now - to see if we find someone who is willing to work on it |
| 11:08 | lucian_, ok, what is the criteria? | |
| 11:08 | lucian_ | erikos: try it, give up if it doesn't work |
| 11:08 | erikos: extensions target the firefox XUL | |
| 11:09 | tomeu | erikos: as you wish, we need someone to look at the extension manager in firefox and see how much is in xulrunner and how much we should implement |
| 11:09 | lucian_ | which Browse doesn't have |
| 11:09 | erikos: stuff that uses toolbars, statusbars, etc. won't work | |
| 11:09 | erikos | oh, ok - that soes not sound that easy after all |
| 11:09 | lucian_ | erikos: gears does because it barely has any GUI |
| 11:10 | erikos | lucian_, ok, but you need gears after all |
| 11:10 | lucian_, I mean you need it for your project, right? | |
| 11:11 | lucian_ | erikos: for making web apps work offline |
| 11:11 | tomeu | erikos: extensions are bundles of chrome+components |
| 11:11 | erikos: xulrunner supports adding chrome and components | |
| 11:11 | erikos: so if you read my post you will see how we expand the extension bundle and install each piece in its place | |
| 11:14 | erikos | tomeu, ok, thanks for the explanation |
| 11:14 | lucian_, and offline support would be nice - but not highest priority? | |
| 11:15 | lucian_ | erikos: not really. most web apps are inherently online |
| 11:15 | erikos: some work really nicely offline, like google docs | |
| 11:16 | erikos: so it would be very nice to have it, but not vital | |
| 11:16 | erikos | lucian_, ok, that sounds good |
| 11:16 | lucian_, so we are not blocking on it | |
| 11:16 | lucian_, but we can try to make it work in parallel | |
| 11:16 | lucian_ | erikos: yes |
| 11:16 | bookmarklets i plan to work on today | |
| 11:16 | erikos | awesome |
| 11:17 | what else do we have? | |
| 11:17 | lucian_ | userscripts are also very useful, i'll try to get greasemonkey installed |
| 11:17 | are you familiar with greasemonkey? | |
| 11:17 | erikos | nope |
| 11:17 | Allows you to customize the way a webpage displays using small bits of JavaScript. ... | |
| 11:17 | ok | |
| 11:18 | lucian_ | erikos: yes, mostly |
| 11:18 | it basically injects some javascript in the page | |
| 11:18 | it allows you to do really cool things, thougu | |
| 11:19 | like this http://code.google.com/apis/ge[…]/gearsmonkey.html | |
| 11:19 | erikos: there's another thing, i was thinking of allowing javascript to call dbus methods | |
| 11:19 | erikos | is greasemonkey similar to gears - installation wise |
| 11:19 | lucian_ | erikos: yes, also an extension |
| 11:19 | erikos | lucian_, yeah, I mean - barely no GUI |
| 11:19 | lucian_ | erikos: so users could download a userscript that adds native sugar alerts and sounds to gmail |
| 11:19 | erikos | ? |
| 11:20 | lucian_ | erikos: a window and a status bar icon |
| 11:20 | erikos: i may have to remove some code from it, but it should work | |
| 11:20 | erikos | lucian_, so the trick we do for gears might work? |
| 11:20 | lucian_, ok | |
| 11:20 | lucian_ | erikos: if not, it shouldn't be that hard to make my own javascript injector |
| 11:21 | erikos | lucian_, ok, cool |
| 11:22 | lucian_, http://groups.google.com/group[…]/988927e098b7b38c | |
| 11:23 | actually: http://sandbox.movial.com/wiki[…]owser_DBus_Bridge | |
| 11:23 | lucian_ | erikos: yes, that's what i'm using |
| 11:23 | erikos | great |
| 11:23 | lucian_ | erikos: it works great with firefox and epiphany-gecko, but for some reason not with Browse |
| 11:23 | erikos | sigh :/ |
| 11:24 | lucian_ | erikos: i can't find anything relevant in the logs either |
| 11:24 | erikos: i'll try to compare logs from firefox and Browse when running the dbus test | |
| 11:25 | erikos | lucian_, ok |
| 11:25 | lucian_ | erikos: anyway, this even less priority than Gears right now |
| 11:25 | s/this/this is/ | |
| 11:26 | erikos | yup, lucian_ - other issues? |
| 11:26 | lucian_ | erikos: things like this make the platform integration better, but getting SSBs to work in the first place is more important |
| 11:26 | erikos: that's all i can think of | |
| 11:26 | erikos | lucian_, yeah - it is important to get the base going first |
| 11:26 | lucian_, and have the other parts in mind | |
| 11:27 | lucian_, at least I understand a bit better now the parts involved ;p | |
| 11:28 | lucian_, let's wrap up here | |
| 11:28 | lucian_ | erikos: ok |
| 11:29 | erikos | a) what is the plan for the page at: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Webified |
| 11:29 | or wait - let me see | |
| 11:30 | lucian_ | erikos: that page is just slighty outdated |
| 11:30 | erikos | it would be cool to have the stuff we discussed today listed there |
| 11:30 | or at another place | |
| 11:30 | yeah | |
| 11:30 | lucian_ | erikos: is my blog ok? http://honeyweb.wordpress.com |
| 11:31 | erikos | lucian_, I would prefer the wiki - actually |
| 11:32 | lucian_ | erikos: alright, i'll put it on the wiki then |
| 11:32 | erikos | lucian_, http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/DeviceKit |
| 11:33 | lucian_, my plan is to have something like that for the roadmap | |
| 11:33 | lucian_, I have to get up a template | |
| 11:33 | lucian_, I guess I should do that *now* | |
| 11:34 | lucian_ | erikos: yeah, that looks nice |
| 11:34 | erikos: i guess I could make a new wiki page without all the GSoC related content | |
| 11:34 | erikos | lucian_, ok let me do this - you can then add the info there |
| 11:34 | lucian_, yup | |
| 11:34 | lucian_ | erikos: alright, go ahead |
| 11:34 | erikos: i'll add content later | |
| 11:34 | FGrose | erikos: I could do the wiki template based on the DeviceKit page |
| 11:35 | erikos | lucian_, and we can send a link as a summary to the ml |
| 11:35 | lucian_ | erikos: yep |
| 11:35 | erikos | FGrose, that would be awesome! |
| 11:36 | ok - looks like we have a plan | |
| 11:36 | lucian_, thanks for joining in today and being such a nice guest ;p | |
| 11:37 | lucian_ | erikos: thanks for being a nice host :) |
| 11:37 | erikos | lucian_, do you think this was useful and we should do the same for othe other GSOc projects? |
| 11:37 | lucian_ | erikos: yes, it was quite useful. it always helps to explain your idea to someone else |
| 11:38 | erikos: and it spurs more feedback, too | |
| 11:38 | erikos | lucian_, ok, I can propose this then |
| 11:38 | lucian_, of course | |
| 11:39 | FGrose, thanks for the Linuxtag event reminder ;p | |
| 11:39 | closes | |
| 11:39 | #endmeeting |