Change.gov Firefox Extension (Unofficial)

[Joe Solomon]

Hi all! 

Happy New Year! 

I hope things are well with all of you.  For the past two months, I've been on-and-off brewing ideas for what to do with ObamaFox.  Inspired (or maybe ripped) from a conversation with Dietrich, what if we did a quick re-skin of ObamaFox as a new (Unofficial) Change.gov Firefox Extension?  

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

This would be less about campaigning and more about engaging people in their government.  The Change.gov site is very promising when it comes to interactive features - and although it's quite young, I think helping people connect to Change.gov feeds could empower citizens to get involved.

We could also explore adding optional progressive blogs you could subscribe to -- like say Change.org, Change-Congress, OpenCongress, etc. People would be able to get official government news right next to the top blogs that are keeping track of our government - creating a potentially really cool transparency loop. (This will require some additions on our part - from stressing that the tool is unofficial to matching different icons to different feeds - Abi's original idea) 

Kalib has already created a sleek initial mockup -- attached. 

This is a total out-of-the-blue e-mail and I definitely realize that it's very US-centric -- and I should have started this conversation two months ago.  (Yikes)

What do you think, though? are you down? 

Best,

Joe

PS - Most of us were also involved with the Knowmore Extension . A round of congrats is deserved on that front -- Mozilla featured the extension a few weeks ago - and downloads soon passed 10,000 -- and last I checked we were gunning for 20k.  Unbelievable!

[Chris Messina]

So... I'm working on a project that should launch in about a weak to collect short, medium and video messages of "farewell to George W" and "Aloha to Obama".

We will be using Mechanical Turk to seed our database with responses, and then moving to Twitter to pull responses hashtagged with #farewell and #aloha.

Would this kind of data be interesting to you for this extension?

Chris

--
Chris Messina
Citizen-Participant &
 Open Web Advocate-at-Large

factoryjoe.com # diso-project.org
citizenagency.com # vidoop.com
This email is:   [ ] bloggable    [X] ask first   [ ] private

[Dietrich Ayala]

Definitely! Likely this extension will have configurable feeds, as
ObamaFox did. We could include the feed(s) for this in the set.

[Dietrich Ayala]

Infrastructure note: currently the default feed set is a local file in
the extension. We should probably host the list itself remotely so
that we can add/remove event-specific feeds like these without having
to push a new version of the extension.

[Dietrich Ayala]

Another note: We should host the background images remotely as well.
That would allow us to do event-specific re-skinning without
re-releasing.

[karl]

> I hope things are well with all of you. For the past two months, I've
> been on-and-off brewing ideas for what to do with ObamaFox. Inspired
> (or maybe ripped) from a conversation with Dietrich, what if we did a
> quick re-skin of ObamaFox as a new (Unofficial) Change.gov Firefox
> Extension?
>

> This is a total out-of-the-blue e-mail and I definitely realize that
> it's very US-centric -- and I should have started this conversation two
> months ago. (Yikes)
>
> What do you think, though? are you down?

Things are pretty quiet here right now so I can certainly lend a hand
for a while.

> Kalib has already created a sleek initial mockup -- attached.
>

Nice

> Another note: We should host the background images remotely as well.
> That would allow us to do event-specific re-skinning without
> re-releasing.

It we want to be able to re-skin between the current (obamafox) skin and
the new (change.gov) one then we'd need to host the css file. But that
introduces security risks (think moz-bindings and man-in-the-middle
attacks) that could run malicious code.

If we only want to adjust the background image, then I think that's
quite safe to do, but it means we wont be able to adjust the tab colours
and such like, unless we use images for everything.

If we're only going for the background image then I'd suggest having two
overlapping boxes with background images. A default one located within
the add-on and a box on top containing the remote image. This way, the
add-on still looks fine if for some reason the hosted image is unavailable.

--
Karl Dearden
w: http://interclue.com/
e: ka...@interclue.com

[Abimanyu Raja]

This sounds like a great idea! I have some free time over the weekend. I'll get started on this.

I love the idea of event-specific re-skinning. But changing default feeds for every event might annoy the user. Just for inauguration (since it'll likely be the first time the user uses the extension), we could add Chris' feeds as the default one.

Besides just converting the ObamaFox extension to change.gov extension, I think a lot more can be done to help change.gov users and people follow news about the new administration. I'll post my thoughts on this soon.

And with regards to the entire project, we should have a bug tracker (is there already one?) so we can assign ourselves things to work on.

Cheers,

Abi

2009/1/8 karl <ka...@interclue.com>

[Joe Solomon]

Wow! So awesome that most of everyone is on board!

I just updated an initial list of feeds -- http://groups.google.com/group/obamafox/web/feeds-for-unofficial-change-gov-extension

As well as created a way for anyone to share their fav feeds - http://changefox.uservoice.com/)

And Kalib just sent me the latest mockups and photoshop files - attached (and uploaded as files in the Google Group)

I'd totally down for hosting images remotely so we can do updates and re-skinning w/o hitting a new version. I also like Karl's approach to a back up plan for when images don't load.  Note: I was thinking this would be a new extension. Dietrich, what are your thoughts?

Abi - Agreed on the feeds.  And very excited for your other ideas for helping change.gov users follow news. 

I'm about to fly back to Vancouver (still in NY for the holidays) and will be back online on Monday. I look forward to seeing what you can whip together over the weekend!

Best,

Joe

PS - Chris, please send along your feeds when you've launched, excited to see what the new project looks like. 

[Dietrich Ayala]

it's *so* awesome that everyone is down for this! while the first step
is an ObamaFox-ish extension, i agree w/ Abi and Joe that it can and
should be more. i'd love to see it become a power tool for political
engagement and *participation*, and am excited for further discussion
about what's possible.

but first for the re-skin: i created the skeleton extension, and put
it in the same source tree as obamafox, in the changegov directory. i
added all the feeds that Joe put up, we can modify later as needed.

i also started a to-do list here, please edit as you see fit, and put
your name down next to tasks you're interested in working on:

http://groups.google.com/group/obamafox/web/change-gov-to-do-list

i'm free the first part of the weekend, so will be around. i'll be in
#change on irc.mozilla.org if anyone wants to come hang out!

-d

[karl]

>> And with regards to the entire project, we should have a bug tracker (is
>> there already one?) so we can assign ourselves things to work on.

I'm in total agreement with Abimanyu here. Whilst setting a bugtracker
up is a bit of work I've found they are always worth it.

I'd suggest going with a google project hosting
<http://code.google.com/hosting/createProject> since we already have the
main group there and we all have accounts there. I haven't used their
bugtracker before but from initial impressions I think it would be
sufficient for our needs.

However it may depend on licencing issues (Joe / Dietrich)?

Karl Dearden
w: http://interclue.com/
e: ka...@interclue.com

[Abimanyu Raja]

karl, Could you add your latest css changes to changegov/skin/overlay.css? I think Dietrich designated changegov to be folder for the new extension while the src/ is for the old obamafox extension. Why don't we just get rid of src/ ? It only leads to more confusion. If we ever need it, we can always get it from the old changesets. Or we could start a new repos.

- Abi

2009/1/10 karl <ka...@interclue.com>

[Dietrich Ayala]

yep, it's all in /changegov. i'm down w/ the previous suggestion of
moving to code.google.com though. it provides more services than
mozdev, as well as less confusion w/ obamafox.

[Abimanyu Raja]

Here's how it looks now. Pretty similar to the mockup. Only the tab labels don't fit into the available space and the scrollbars are not styled (I saw that the relevant css was commented out in overlay.css. Any particular reason?).

I like GCode's bug tracker. But if we use that as our repos, we'll have to switch to SVN. Personally, I prefer HG.

- Abi

2009/1/11 Dietrich Ayala <auto...@gmail.com>

[Abimanyu Raja]

Oh...I forgot. I have a question about change.gov. Is this site only for the transition period? If it is, are we going to rebrand our extension again once Obama's president? Cos if it's going to stay as change.gov during the presidency, then it might be worth starting a new twitter and AMO account to avoid confusion with ObamaFox.

Cheers,
Abi

2009/1/11 Abimanyu Raja <abiman...@gmail.com>

[karl]

>> karl, Could you add your latest css changes to
>> changegov/skin/overlay.css? I think Dietrich designated changegov to be
>> folder for the new extension while the src/ is for the old obamafox
>> extension.

Doh, my bad.

Thanks for merging the changes to overlay.css Abimanyu. I've restored
the obamafox/src/ files back to how they were supposed to be also.

Karl Dearden
w: http://interclue.com/
e: ka...@interclue.com


Abimanyu Raja wrote:
> karl, Could you add your latest css changes to
> changegov/skin/overlay.css? I think Dietrich designated changegov to be
> folder for the new extension while the src/ is for the old obamafox
> extension. Why don't we just get rid of src/ ? It only leads to more
> confusion. If we ever need it, we can always get it from the old
> changesets. Or we could start a new repos.
>
> - Abi
>

> 2009/1/10 karl <ka...@interclue.com <mailto:ka...@interclue.com>>

>
>
> >> And with regards to the entire project, we should have a bug
> tracker (is
> >> there already one?) so we can assign ourselves things to work on.
>
> I'm in total agreement with Abimanyu here. Whilst setting a bugtracker
> up is a bit of work I've found they are always worth it.
>
> I'd suggest going with a google project hosting
> <http://code.google.com/hosting/createProject> since we already have the
> main group there and we all have accounts there. I haven't used their
> bugtracker before but from initial impressions I think it would be
> sufficient for our needs.
>
> However it may depend on licencing issues (Joe / Dietrich)?
>
> Karl Dearden
> w: http://interclue.com/

> e: ka...@interclue.com <mailto:ka...@interclue.com>

>
>
> Abimanyu Raja wrote:
> > This sounds like a great idea! I have some free time over the
> weekend. I'll
> > get started on this.
> > I love the idea of event-specific re-skinning. But changing
> default feeds
> > for every event might annoy the user. Just for inauguration (since
> it'll
> > likely be the first time the user uses the extension), we could
> add Chris'
> > feeds as the default one.
> >
> > Besides just converting the ObamaFox extension to change.gov

> <http://change.gov> extension, I

> > think a lot more can be done to help change.gov

> <http://change.gov> users and people follow news

> > about the new administration. I'll post my thoughts on this soon.
> >
> > And with regards to the entire project, we should have a bug
> tracker (is
> > there already one?) so we can assign ourselves things to work on.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Abi
> >

> > 2009/1/8 karl <ka...@interclue.com <mailto:ka...@interclue.com>>

> >
> >>
> >>> I hope things are well with all of you. For the past two
> months, I've
> >>> been on-and-off brewing ideas for what to do with ObamaFox.
> Inspired
> >>> (or maybe ripped) from a conversation with Dietrich, what if we
> did a
> >>> quick re-skin of ObamaFox as a new (Unofficial) Change.gov Firefox
> >>> Extension?
> >>>
> >>> This is a total out-of-the-blue e-mail and I definitely realize that
> >>> it's very US-centric -- and I should have started this
> conversation two
> >>> months ago. (Yikes)
> >>>
> >>> What do you think, though? are you down?
> >> Things are pretty quiet here right now so I can certainly lend a hand
> >> for a while.
> >>
> >>> Kalib has already created a sleek initial mockup -- attached.
> >>>
> >> Nice
> >>
> >>> Another note: We should host the background images remotely as well.
> >>> That would allow us to do event-specific re-skinning without
> >>> re-releasing.
> >> It we want to be able to re-skin between the current (obamafox)
> skin and

> >> the new (change.gov <http://change.gov>) one then we'd need to

> host the css file. But that
> >> introduces security risks (think moz-bindings and man-in-the-middle
> >> attacks) that could run malicious code.
> >>
> >> If we only want to adjust the background image, then I think that's
> >> quite safe to do, but it means we wont be able to adjust the tab
> colours
> >> and such like, unless we use images for everything.
> >>
> >> If we're only going for the background image then I'd suggest
> having two
> >> overlapping boxes with background images. A default one located
> within
> >> the add-on and a box on top containing the remote image. This
> way, the
> >> add-on still looks fine if for some reason the hosted image is
> unavailable.
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> Karl Dearden
> >> w: http://interclue.com/

> >> e: ka...@interclue.com <mailto:ka...@interclue.com>
> >>
> >
> > >
> >
>
>
>
>
> >

[Joe Solomon]

Hey everyone!

I'm down with moving to Google Code -- Are we all cool w/the GPL v. 3?

Abi - If SVN is a significant drawback, let's re-consider, if not, the other tools seem to outweigh, includ. bug tracking, no?

Also -- My hunch is Change.gov will grow up after the inauguration into the new administration's virtual headquarters.  They've invested way too much into the site to let it fade away.  I'm with you on the new Twitter (just set up) and AMO - will DM passwords.
Twitter.com/changefox

Are we ready to upload the first draft to AMO?

Best,

Joe

[Abimanyu Raja]

Hey Joe,

I'm cool with SVN. Initially, I didn't want to switch between different version control systems for my projects (already use CVS & Hg). But the many benefits of Google Code outweigh this drawback.

I understand that change.gov will go on but I expect that they would move it to whitehouse.gov. And then, we would have to rebrand again. 

And regarding the twitter account, you can actually change your ID without affecting friends+followers. So, rather than getting 200 people to follow @changefox, it might be easier to rename/rebrand the @obamafox account for Twitter.

Cheers,

Abi

2009/1/13 Joe Solomon <j...@engagejoe.com>