GSoC 2015 - UX Engineering Project Discussion

[Bhavul Gauri]

Hello!

I am Bhavul Gauri, a fourth year undergraduate doing major in Mathematics as well as Computer Science under dual degree scheme from BITS Pilani Goa Campus.

I went through the User Experience Engineering Project for GSoC and was interested in working for the same. I've worked with UI and UX for around 2 years and I am well versed with HTML, CSS, Javascript and jQuery. I've also completed level 0 to level 3 and sorted out a few issues too.

Now, I don't really want this thread to be about my application only. I welcome all others to contribute to this thread if they're interested in the same project as well. There could be several approaches to working on the problem of this project.

Two major ideas that came to my mind were the following :

1. Hacking the form on Host Page Way - Here, you unbind the Enter Key and stop submission from happening. Using chrome API intercept the form, and send the content for privly Injection. The link returned can then be replaced and the form can be submitted.
2.  Live updating of privly link Way - You create a privly link as soon as user starts filling the form. Then, after a certain interval of time, keep updating content at this privly link and when user submits the form, before submit, replace the content with the privly link.

What are your thoughts on these approaches?
Is there a better one in your mind? If yes, share it. So, everyone who wishes to work on this project can work with a more ideal approach. This way it'll help in collaboration too, in case more than one student gets selected for working on this project.

Hoping for a fruitful discussion.

Thank you.

Best.

--

Bhavul Gauri

Student

Msc.(Hons.) Mathematics

B.E.(Hons.) Computer Science and Engineering

Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani, Goa Campus

NH 17B, Zuarinagar

GOA 403 726

Contact: +91-839-0352362

[Sean McGregor]

Context: This "idea" is to remove the necessity for opening a popup window for every post. The ideal is to allow someone to type directly into the host page's window but not into its scripting environment, ie "seamless posting". This requires layering an iframe onto the host page's input element. To prevent spoofing attacks, the user would be notified when they are typing into the host page's scripting environment or the extension's scripting environment via a UI element on the "chrome" of the browser.

I think the most challenging part of this project will be placing an iframe into the host page that coincides with the input element the user is posting to. This is why I recommend developers addressing this project begin by writing a modal window that is not seamless but is displayed in the context of the host's tab. Following the successful implementation of the modal, it would be time to hack until the modal is reliably seamless with the host page's input form.

@Bhavul: I think I would modify your (2) to only update the link once -- on submitting the posting form.

-Sean

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Sean McGregor

Oregon State University, Department of Computer Science
Twitter: seanmcgregor
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[Bhavul Gauri]

Yes. (2) can be modified to do that. I had that idea too. Although, say I'm chatting with you over Facebook chat or hangouts or something similar, then in an IM the privly link would go as soon as we press submit (or at least it should happen like that. We shouldn't include too much delay). There's a chance by then, our request for updating the content on the link hasn't been acknowledged yet. This would mean, perhaps the user on the other side may see an empty iframe.
This is why I wanted to send an update request every second or so.

One question. Does the iframe injected from the links update dynamically?
Say I loaded twitter and there's a privly link there which gets converted to corresponding iframe. Now, I open a new tab and open history app, and change the content for that link.
Would I need to refresh my twitter page to see the change getting reflected?

If iframe is not reloaded dynamically, then we can face the issue I'm talking about above.

[Sean McGregor]

On Tue, Mar 24, 2015 at 9:32 AM, Bhavul Gauri <bhav...@gmail.com> wrote:

Yes. (2) can be modified to do that. I had that idea too. Although, say I'm chatting with you over Facebook chat or hangouts or something similar, then in an IM the privly link would go as soon as we press submit (or at least it should happen like that. We shouldn't include too much delay). There's a chance by then, our request for updating the content on the link hasn't been acknowledged yet. This would mean, perhaps the user on the other side may see an empty iframe.
This is why I wanted to send an update request every second or so.

Our iframe will control when the host page's content is submitted, so it can wait for the remote content to be updated. Also, the starting content will be blank, so there is no risk of exposure.

 

One question. Does the iframe injected from the links update dynamically?
Say I loaded twitter and there's a privly link there which gets converted to corresponding iframe. Now, I open a new tab and open history app, and change the content for that link.
Would I need to refresh my twitter page to see the change getting reflected?

You currently need to reload the web page. If anyone wants to implement websockets, that would be pretty nice.

 

If iframe is not reloaded dynamically, then we can face the issue I'm talking about above.

Solved above.

[Bhavul Gauri]

On 24 Mar 2015 22:10, "Sean McGregor" <smcg...@seanbmcgregor.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 24, 2015 at 9:32 AM, Bhavul Gauri <bhav...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Yes. (2) can be modified to do that. I had that idea too. Although, say I'm chatting with you over Facebook chat or hangouts or something similar, then in an IM the privly link would go as soon as we press submit (or at least it should happen like that. We shouldn't include too much delay). There's a chance by then, our request for updating the content on the link hasn't been acknowledged yet. This would mean, perhaps the user on the other side may see an empty iframe.
>> This is why I wanted to send an update request every second or so.
>
> Our iframe will control when the host page's content is submitted, so it can wait for the remote content to be updated. Also, the starting content will be blank, so there is no risk of exposure.

Yes. But that would add a delay in submission.
Later on, when used a lot, privly server might be congested, and what I thought we could do is simultaneously submit the link and send a request for updating content that was captured prior to submission.
But, this also requires dynamic reloading of iframes.
I can do that as a post gsoc thing, perhaps if I get selected for this project as a student. I am studying Networks and enjoying it so far. I would like implementing the websockets thing. We'll discuss more on that later on, maybe.