Making a browser plugin to allow saving to the file system.

[Arlen Beiler]

To whom it may concern,

I have a thought concerning saving wikis on your local computer. Someone could easily make a browser extension that communicates with a NodeJs process to enable saving wikis back to the file system. I think. But I'm not quite sure how. Does anyone here have any thoughts or experience along this line?

Arlen

[PMario]

Hi Arlen.

That's TiddlyDesktop or any other node-based app the exists already. ...

-m

[PMario]

IMO the trick is, to use what already exists on every operating system. So there should be no need to install additional stuff, except the browser.

The "new" web-extensions API provide a way, to communicate with "native" apps. ...

The problem is, that this mechanism is far away from "simple". .. The "communication" workflow is simple. But to make it "end-user" friendly, we would need an installer for every OS we want to support.

-m

[PMario]

Hi,

TLDR;

We need to convince the browser developers, that the browser-option: "Save file in the following directory: .... " should be set per tab and not global!

---- Long version -------------------

Mozilla is developing something, that is called: Contextual Identities [1] for (3) years now. ...

The idea is, that it should be possible to assign tabs to different user-identities. eg: Personal, Work, Banking, Shopping ...

Those identities allow "separation of concerns" [2]. So it's possible to share or hide information, based on the identities. Internally Mozilla calls the identities "containers". There is an overview, what is and what is-NOT shared: see link [3]

Using contextual-identities is relatively straight forward. see [1] ... So it is "easy" to make a browser extension.

The only thing we would need is:

We need to convince the developers, that the browser-option: "Save file in the following directory: .... " should be set per identity / tab.

I could open a new issue, but we would need to convince them, that it is of general interest for a big community and not just a which from 1 person.

have fun!

mario

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API/contextualIdentities

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_concerns

[3] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Contextual_Identity_Project/Containers#What_is_.28and_isn.27t.29_separated_between_Containers

[PMario]

Hi,

There is an existing addOn, that lets you play with identities: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/

-m

[Arlen Beiler]

Containers is an interesting idea, certainly.

On Friday, August 3, 2018 at 11:02:56 AM UTC+2, PMario wrote:

Hi Arlen. 
That's TiddlyDesktop or any other node-based app the exists already. ... 
-m 

IMO the trick is, to use what already exists on every operating system. So there should be no need to install additional stuff, except the browser.

Installing TiddlyDesktop is not really the option. All the node based tools we have so far require configuration. This ability is second to TiddlyDesktop, TiddlyServer, etc., but it is a scenario that quite a few people find themselves in, especially when TiddlyDesktop doesn't allow the plugins they want or they otherwise would prefer to stay in their normal browser and TiddlyServer requires wikis to be in specific directories. 

What I am talking about is a NodeJS script that only requires a port parameter. The rest is handled by the script itself. The extension would handle security and only forward those calls that come from the correct sources. There would be a secured authentication scheme between the extension and the script to make sure that only the extension can use the script and nothing else. Encryption is not necessary since we would be on the loopback. The script would handle the file IO.  

So that's kind of my idea. Sure, it's definitely a stop-gap measure compared to allowing file system access. But I think it's worth a shot. 

My thoughts,

Arlen

[Jed Carty]

The single executable version of Bob is set up so that you just run the executable and it doesn't require setup to start using the wiki. there are plenty of other things that need to be improved with it but it has that part. It doesn't even require a port parameter to be set and can just find an open port to use. Because by default it open the browser for you you don't even have to worry about knowing what port it picks.