browser integration

[zooko]

I want to load an HTML file from a grid and view it in my browser, and I want hyperlinks in that HTML file to cause other files to be loaded from the grid when I click on them.

Possible techniques:

• proxy (the original technique used by Mojo Nation circa 1999)

• Firefox plugin

• reimplement Tahoe in JavaScript

• ?

[zooko]

This already works if your hyperlinks are of the form "​http://localhost:${PORTNUM}" and have the right port number in them. Should we standardize on using a certain port number? If so, I suggest 8081 because it sounds webbish but isn't registered on the authoritative, canonical list of port numbers, wikipedia:

​http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_TCP_and_UDP_port_numbers

[warner]

unfortunately, standardizing the URLs like that (at least for the vdrive space) is in direct opposition to the XSRF issues from ticket #98. Outside attackers (who have vague control over the user's browser, in the form of serving them pages with IMG tags and deceptive hrefs and such) should not be able to control the local node.

On the other hand, having common URLs for reading URI-based resources shouldn't be a problem. (this also holds true for resources housed in the global vdrive, but the global vdrive is really a demonstration app rather than a long-term service).

[zooko]

Now that we've solved #98, I think that the way we did it makes having a standard web-port number okay!

Having a standard port number would make it so that one person can cut-and-paste their URL and send it to their friend, their friend can paste it into the URL-editing-widget of their browser, and thus load up the same resource. Yay!

[zooko]

As of v0.6.0, the default HTTP URLs start with "​http://localhost:8123". This makes those URLs shareable among users who have Tahoe running locally.

It would be nice if someone who was using tahoe on a remote node, e.g. "​http://mygateway.mydomain.org:8123" could click on a link given to them by someone running their locally, e.g. "​http://localhost:8123"...

Any ideas on further improvements to this usability feature?

[zooko]

see also #432 (writing down filecaps: revise URI scheme)

[davidsarah]

Tagging issues relevant to new cap protocol design.

[davidsarah]

The default webapi port number was changed to 3456 by #536. Note Zooko's comment there, however:

the bigger issue is that each tahoe grid should use a different port number, so people should try not to rely on the default port number.

[zooko]

Unassigning this from myself. We should probably make a new ticket specifically for the Firefox plugin idea. (Brian's new job is on Jetpack: ​https://jetpack.mozillalabs.com/ )

[davidsarah]

zooko wrote:

We should probably make a new ticket specifically for the Firefox plugin idea.

Yes, the summary of this ticket ("browser integration") is way too vague and unfocussed. The enhancement mentioned in the description, of being able to use a relative path from a directory cap to view a file in the WUI, was implemented many moons ago, leaving only the following issue from comment:6 :

It would be nice if someone who was using tahoe on a remote node, e.g. http://mygateway.mydomain.org:8123 could click on a link given to them by someone running their [gateway] locally, e.g. http://localhost:8123...

The ticket keywords for JavaScript-based UI are jsui (for Toby Murray's prototype, see #1000) and webdrive (for the allmydata.com JS client, see #669). "Reimplementing Tahoe in JavaScript," OTOH, doesn't seem practical at this point.

[davidsarah]

Including a grid identifier in URIs is #403. A browser plugin or protocol handler for Tahoe URIs is #1132.