Help wanted testing an App please

Apps
1

I have a simple remoteStorage.js demo App live in the alpha 1 network and would like someone - hopefully a few someones - to try it out before I announce to everyone. So if you don’t mind please:

Play!

It is pretty self explanatory, but I won’t say anything as you are more likely to break it just trying it blind - but if I’m wrong and it is not obvious ask and I’ll explain. It might be broken of course :wink:

And when you have it doing stuff, you can check that it’s actually talking to SAFEnetwork by opening the browser debug console where you will see lots of debug messages, including the POST/PUT/GET operations to the SAFE NFS API. Once authorised it synchronises every ten seconds so you should definitely see activity here when it does this.

If it isn’t synchronising: make sure you’ve managed to get it to connect to SAFEnetwork, and told SAFE Launcher to “Allow” it access.

App Behaviour

This app users local storage to store your list of favourite drinks, but synchronises this with your SAFEnetwork storage. This means it works online and offline, but that if you edit your list in one computer, then access it from a different computer, your list should remain synchronised across them all (once you connect to SAFEnetwork and authorise the app of course).

This functionality all comes for free with the remoteStorage.js library, all I’ve done is extend it to talk to the SAFE NFS API and then got one of their demonstration apps working with it, and hacked around some CORS/CSP issues.

It’s great fun watching it synchronise in the console, but for a regular user it just happens! Well I find it fun anyway :slight_smile:

Results & Problems

I have only tried this myself using Firefox on Linux so if you check it out please let me know the results you had, including which browser and operating system you tried. Also, whether you tried synchronising across multiple PCs.

Note that the app will look like it is working even if you don’t connect to SAFE, because it is able to work offline, so to be sure it is storing your drinks on SAFEnetwork you either need to try using it from two machines, and check it synchronises from one to the other, or open the browser console and see that it is calling the SAFE NFS API without errors (e.g. periodic bursts of GET response 200). Please check this one way or the other!

Remember, this is on the alpha 1 network so you must use safe_launcher v0.8.0 (not 0.8.1 which is testnet 8).

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Chrome linux is also perfect. Very very neat @happybeing lets see if we can get some osx/win tests as well. I think it’s way good enough to announce though.

A javascript coder now, very interesting :wink:

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I wanted to check it works for more than just me first! :slight_smile:

Thanks for trying it out David.

EDIT: OK, after such a vote of confidence, I announced it. :slight_smile:

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By the looks of things we’ll all be JS coders after a while here, eh? :slight_smile:

Been watching videos on the basics of it, and jQuery, and starting to get introduced to Node, React, Angular etc etc.

Want to hire out less and code more myself, for my apps, where possible

Great job Mr. Mark @happybeing ! Inspiration

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Hello !

I have been playing a bit with your app

It works here on a fedora 21 firefox, with the following comments :

  • I need to refresh the page a few times, not sure how many, before the safestore button becomes effective and triggers authorisation request to the launcher

  • once authorized, I need to bypass CORS restrictions using CorsEverywhere so that I get rid of this :

Content Security Policy: The page’s settings blocked the loading of a resource at http://myfd.safenet/ (“form-action http://api.safenet”).

  • Once Cors is bypassed, if I click on the Safestore button , it seems that nothing happens, but looking at the console, I can see that plenty of good safe stuff is happening.

  • Then if I go to another machine or simply use a fresh private window to visit the page again, when I hit the safestore button it first seems again that nothing happens, as I first don’t see any drinks on the list. But the console again tells me that it pulls good information from Safe. I need to refresh the page so that the drinks list is actually displayed on screen. Maybe you could try to have the display refreshed when one clicks on the safestore button ? Or maybe you did and for some reason it didn’t work as expected ?

In the end, myfd DID retrieve my list from Safe , which is really nice !

I was confused first at which button one has to use to connect to the launcher, as the triangle google drive logo looks a lot like the Maidsafe one, and the old forum one too - Maybe it would be nice to have mouseover hints to clarify this ?

Other than that, I see an external call for the background image at flickr , but well , I guess this is convenience for not spending your time on this and focus on functionnality !

I also tried to open it with beaker, but then it would simply not connect to the launcher.

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Hi, did a circuit last night with your app, Ubuntu, OSX and Windows. Could not get it working in Windows 10, resorted to a 8.1-PC where I had the proxy set up in FF. Moved the proxy-setting to the network and it tested OK in Chrome and IE too. Like @nice said, as it is the upper right corner is a wee bit fidgety now, you instinctively start to refresh and restart and may end up with more than one authorization? Was not conclusive because of this but having it updating from two different browsers on the same machine at the same time does not work or so it seems?

That said my test drinks, amongst which a “Lumumba” (4 Parts Cognac, 2 Parts Chocolate Liqueur and Milk) spread over the three tested machines and those browser as promised :slight_smile:

Your attribution of the photo of your favorite drink is in doubt as to where to go, the rightmost connections-icon turns into missing when you unload the Launcher before the app.

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Thanks @nice and @JBishop very helpful and spot on quality test and feedback [dual high five] :slight_smile:

Some things you mention might be fixed (having to refresh to start sync) but have not made it into the RS.js I used - my bad. So thanks for catching that!

You will definitely see CORS errors in the console though not necessarily breakers, but I must admit I may have forgotten to test without CorsEverywhere after I hacked RS.js to remove it’s inline CSS. :blush: So another very helpful catch.

Props to you both for getting around these issues and getting it to work!

I think the only clearnet link is for attribution, not the bg image itself. I’ll have to look again at that, and the CORS errors.

The icons are part of a widget that is being rewritten by one of the RS guys so I’ll pass on the suggestion for hover text which I agree would improve the UX. It will also be possible to choose just to have the SAFEnetwork icon there, or to automatically assume SAFE Launcher and ask for auth on loading of course. These will be application developer choices and I think will need the developer community to work or together what’s the best default, alternatives for different kinds of app, what settings to give the user control over etc.

Thanks for the additional points which are new and I’ll make a note to test for. Really great feedback.

I’ll have to try a Lumumba and I’ll be happy to buy each of you one - at the MaidSafe launch party maybe! :tropical_drink:

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