IPFS GUI and Browsers Weekly, 1 Apr 2020

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From YouTube: IPFS in Opera and an assortment of updates - IPFS GUI and Browsers Weekly 2020-04-01

Description

Opera launch: https://blog.ipfs.io/2020-03-30-ipfs-in-opera-for-android/
Meeting Notes: https://github.com/ipfs/team-mgmt/pull/1132

About IPFS GUI and Browsers Weekly: https://github.com/ipfs/team-mgmt/issues/790
IPFS Mirror: https://ipfs.io/ipfs/bafybeif32c2xsyysbn5trysuhvtydexdijxilcdlmmjbhju6fn5uycliku/

For more information on IPFS
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A

Welcome to GUI and in web browsers weekly call for the 1st of April 2020 this week. I see we have an action-packed agendas. Well, maybe jump straight into it.

A

This is me sharing my screen. Please not if you can see my screen perfect, alright, so the first is sort of like a shout out and also highlight of how ipfs adoption is progressing. Its room project is using ipfs and ens for hosting their website, so ET room, dot, h, ET h is e NS name, which you can load in any web browser that has IP, has companion installed or has a support for DNS resolving. If not, you need to add that link suffix and just for the purpose of demonstration.

A

There is this IP NS colon, slash, slash, link which later we'll talk about opera and why this link is important. But for now, if you open this, you will notice that, on my machine, I have active as companion installed, this better version which supports subdomains. So it automatically what happened here is IP first companion, redirected, ET, room that eth to local gateway and that gateway resolve DNS link using eth, dns resolver and, in the end everything ended up on the sub domain, which gave not bad user experience on the address bar.

A

So that's, that's it. That's a critical announcement.

B

And demonstration huge yeah.

A

B

Feel like we need the the animated, the cinematic version of all of the hijinks that take place in order to actually make that happen. I I do take issue with that. It's like a good experience. Hugh's experience at the end, give me there's a big padlock with anteye through it not secure. So there's some work to be done, but still form a community about so standpoint. Huge and shouting it was massive yeah.

A

Definitely and just to address the padlock, its Firefox only problem, and there is an open issue which is scheduled to be closed soon.

C

A

So close, so the moment day will hard-code. The problem here is Firefox does not trust the local host name, because it may be hijacked by DNS resolver. What chromium is doing the hard-coded that to local host IP, so they marked out a secure context in case of Firefox. It's not the case yet, but it will be so if anyone wants to follow this issue. There's like last, like two weeks ago, there was a patch which gave us both like secure context, hard-coded IP, but it's not there.

A

Yet, since there are some bugs, they need to fix. First I mean.

B

Music speed step, wait, there's still local studio and a port number, so we still have some work to do step by step for getting cancer yeah.

D

A

Yep, that's the announcement. Another quick announcement, slash update is subdomain in IPS companion. It was scheduled to land last week, but they did not cuz I continue to find new, bugs and edge cases, and this one is interesting, so I thought I would share. So it's about sub resource quirks. So it's easy. When we, when you open an entire website, it gets redirected to a sub domain and that's it like everything. It's loaded from the same origin.

A

But what happens if you got a regular HTTP web page and that web page has some ipfs resources and a sub like a sub resource, for example you're on a page, and this image could be loaded from ipfs dot, io or some other public gateway. So what happens in that mixed environment when you have a regular website, but someone embedded image from ipfs gateway and we want IDF s companion to leverage the fact that we have a local, node and load every IP FS resource from local node instead of a public gateway.

A

This is what companion is doing right now if it finds ipfs resource. On a page, let's say it's a public forum and someone embedded an image from a public gateway. It will redirect that specific image, not the entire website, which is not on ipfs, but that specific image will be loaded from ipfs. The problem is like most of websites are secular context. They are loaded from HTTP and if we try to load sub resource from insecure context, that request will get blocked, and here where it gets interesting.

A

So I made a test page to illustrate this. This is I, have a previous beta version of companion, which doesn't ship with the fix yet, but it demonstrates the problem so here this is a hug hug and B it's HTTP page, and that page has an embedded image from our public gateway. So you can see here the image did not load and why did it did not load, because the image location is a public gateway?

A

However, ipfs companion will redirect that to a sub domain and that sub domain, as we discussed before, like moments before it's not secure context. Yet so it's like our Rube Goldberg machine, which ends up with image, not working. However, I found a way we basically would use path of gateway for sub resources for now in Firefox, I think, there's a separate bug in chromium where they may be a little bit over the top with like they are on the side, safe side on the security and they kind of hard called HTTP protocol.

A

When you use proxy setup so I think there is either a bug or a feature: I need to research it a little bit more, however, the same fix which fixed this should fix it in chromium. But this is like just to illustrate its if we want to leverage IP first companion, to till it's like limits of what's possible. We we need to address this before we ship subdomains, because I had a lot of hack pots where I had images from ipfs and those stopped working and I to fix that first.

A

So that's my quick update, I hope to land a better with the fix today or tomorrow, and hopefully will that will be it and will ship to the stable Channel the next one. Any questions around this before we move to the next one.

A

E

Dietrich, do you want to take the problem I sure.

B

I will start but I thinking you for all the hard work you did in setting up this page, for example, that you just showed us that led to the launch of upper browser yesterday for Android day before yesterday, technically, but it really got started out into the Play stores across all the regions by Tuesday morning. Pacific time had shown up for me in East Coast us in the place water but yeah opera for Android, a number 57 them I launched with a cuvettes protocol support.

B

It can load ever since back, but still has a couple of bugs. We also discovered a late-breaking bug where the Settings panel is not available and they're gonna ship, a an update that looks like in the next week or two that will fix that. So you can actually then choose your gateway as we advertised in a blog post. But overall the reception has been really really good, interesting character.

B

They have an estimated around quarter of a million or a quarter billion users, they're saying like think they're, public numbers or like 225 million worldwide, or something that across all markets products. They have some interesting products. Like TV, which is a chunk of their revenue, or they have applications and services, and then they have a numbers on smartphones, desktop dumb phones and different variations of some of these devices.

B

Opera Mini has deep penetration in markets Africa, so it's really interesting and then the company itself also sold to a investment conglomerate based in China a couple years ago, so just a unique character. The source is not open to the browser as well, but they're, very supportive of web three use cases and stocks. The developer needs which really I profess support, was a easy decision. I think therein to make it just smoothen the developer pathway there.

B

Let's make it so that the web 3 apps, could load easily in browser very interesting as well that they're choosing mobile first, which speaks to a developer demand from that segment for them, and that's something that in other efforts key all around nascent support for mobile use cases were close business cases are. You can see more and more of this over the next year, but overall positive replies in social launched a bunch of different press coverage.

B

They called it basically like their their kaboom browser and that really got a lot of play in the world in some larger tech, press and business press as well so and I profess has mentioned in almost all of those in their official press release. I profess was the first thing mentioned in their list of features, so that was a and try to get some fixes into that press release around things like the consistent use of address or addressing there's some work.

B

I think that we have to do around educating on the recommended language to use when talking about these things still using location, location bar things like that, but definitely successful, release huge moment for p2p I think probably one of the larger places where actually, at least at least close enough one degree of separation from the actual p2p network has been been deployed.

B

The folks we don't have access to things like absolute numbers and statistics metrics around usage from them, but I'm definitely investigating ways that we can understand that, especially given either gateway metrics or things like that. But super good.

A

It's awesome just just a quick highlight that they launched. However, their rollout on the Android may be delayed depending on the region you are in. So if it's you, you can install it from the Play Store on Android. However, the version dude that you installed may not have it like. Yes, that was the case in the beginning of the week. However, maybe.

B

A

B

A

B

The first 24 hours was yes, like, even in the US or like you're, getting conflicting things like the release date on the web page on the Play Store on the correct date. But then the actual one in the place around the device itself didn't yep.

A

Awesome awesome, it's so very exciting, especially given that it's the first time the like mainstream web browser supports content. Address content addressed resources as the first-class citizen, because, just like I shared before, like you, you have this ipfs : / CID link and you don't specify location and your browser will just get it and that's pretty powerful. The fact that its delegated ipfs client, all that stuff is like important but I, think that's the way, we'll look back. That would be like the first step into like moving away from location, addressing how super awesome.

A

Thank you, Dietrich, for pushing this forward.

A

Hugo are you here? Can you tell us about browser data store changes, I've been told, there's a new data store for j/s.

F

Yes, can you guys hear me I'm having some problems with zone because I don't see and it's your faces? If you can, you hear me, Alex finds yep.

G

F

I'm doing a bunch of work related to like removing no Global's stuff like that. So basically, our code base has a lot of expects, a lot of stuff that it's only available in node, so I'm doing some changes, so the browser integration is easier with bundlers and all that stuff. So I got stuck a little bit on the data store that we had that Jesus used level DB.

F

So I did some work, trying to move the leveldb ripples to know the global free environments, but I was getting stuck a lot because there's so many repos, some interaction and abstractions. So basically, I have been wanting to do a new database for a long time. So yeah I did it. You have the the repo there it's it uses directly index TV number, so there's no rubber around index to be like leveldb does, and actually we didn't need it like for no, it might be.

F

We might have some advantages by using level 2b, but in the browser it was just a wrapper around index TV. So it was me mostly extra cold wrapping everything. So, as you can see, the the bundle side is smaller.

F

It's a little bit faster I'm, still seeing like level DB or level J's, which is a browser version of level. Dvd I think it's still in lines a little bit better. So if you run it like three or four times level, TV starts to be a little bit faster than the new data store, but I should be able to work around it and optimize the code base, but mostly it's easier. It's smaller! It's like maintaining, maintaining it. It's it's gonna be much simpler because it's just a few lines of code.

F

So yeah, that's. Basically it.

A

Awesome I got two questions. The first question is.

A

What's the plan for populating this and making it the default in J's ipfs, because I understand that we will probably replace the level DB in the browser bundle with this one right.

F

G

What's the question specifically I worried about something Oh like.

A

I'm, not working I just wanted to confirm that eventually this will be the default in jsap, FS and another thing is I've been playing with Riyad the matrix clients recently, and it had this pop up asking me: do you want to grant this page persistent data storage which which reminded me of so.

A

While we make it the default, we probably will add this configuration option to give it website developer ability to request the permanent storage I guess so. That's more people watching this video than.

D

A

Are on the same page? Yes, so.

F

Right now, right now, this will be swapped in the in the JSP FS, but right now it will function exactly in the same way that we have it right now. There's no changes to like the final result. Like the top level, API will function the same way. There's no new notifications.

F

Everything will stay the same just a little bit smaller a little bit faster and a lot easier to maintain those changes that you thought that's future work at. We will definitely need to get yeah.

A

Awesome. Thank you so much for pushing this forward.

H

Just in question, when do you expect these two to be integrated in jessup FS, as I'm or as I will be working soon on the systems for the peers are in it to be cool to already use it.

F

As fast so right now, I'm just waiting for a couple of peers to the merge.

F

This data I just finished like a DFS repo tests, so everything is green, so at least up and live up to I profess repo.

F

Everything just needs to be much so after after that, as you know, I I need to make sure Jessica, fess still works and all that, but right now, I just need to be ours to be revealed in words, and everything should be a real well like hopefully this week, but yeah in Jessica, fest I, don't know maybe next week it depends on how fast, like I, can get people to review on merge, Pierce, okay,.

H

That's that's cool I. Think.

A

Some any remaining questions about figures latest on. Oh.

G

F

One remark yeah I saw this is mostly for like core developers or contributors, that's already dealt with repo or anything related to data source. I saw in a lot of places like the data stores being used without calling the open method, because some of the I don't even know how why this was like all over little ways. But you need to call open on the database at least on this one on.

F

If you don't call open, you'll, get an error explaining I added specific for this use case, because in a lot of places, the open method was not being called, and at least for this one. You need to call it or it doesn't work to get an error telling you latest or needs to be open. So if you see that you already know what you need to do, you need to call open in a data store.

A

A

Protocol handler API grant updates I'll make this brief. We discussing.

A

The grant to add native protocol handler for browser extensions, so this will be a generic API I believe we discuss it a few times before so here. I will just give a quick update that we have a discussion with earlier about some details to flesh out maintain milestones mostly, for example, one of one of those is the API for registering redirect based protocol handler, which is not supported by chromium. Yet so there is this API which lets Firefox users, Firefox extension users to register redirect based protocol handler.

A

In our case, we redirect our public gateway, but it's just a redirect. We are not able to return the payload, but still it's something and chrome chromium project do not have this I field an issue some time ago and it's the issue was marked as valid. However, no one cares about it.

A

So, unless we do this as a part of this grant, it won't happen and I feel it's probably a good milestone to first deliver feature parity with Firefox, so gets to the level of redirects being supported in both places and being able for extension, being able to register protocol handler and then build this native handler, which is capable of returning bytes on top of this. So this is like a quick update, we'll probably continued discussion in this long long long long, long, follow request. However, I just wanted to highlight that the discussion is happening.

A

And the next one is p2p pub/sub based fuel discovery, yeah.

I

So pops up options in the browser are pretty limited at the moment and they usually evolve some some middle server. That has a bunch of like weird logic in there to make that happen. So this past weekend, I stopped out the initial work for a pub sub-base, pure discovery module, and it's mostly done I'm just working on some integration with a relay server. But ultimately what this does is it just requires that a JSL, p2p, node or JSI PFS node, run pub/sub, and then it subscribes to a global namespace.

I

So it's it's very much like mdns in the browser, but on a global namespace, and so what this will allow us to do is to query, be a public pub sub publishes and then everybody will be able to respond to those queries, and so we can get peer discovery there, which is great, because now we don't have to be like we don't have to have the same intermediary node we could actually potentially be multiple hops away from them, appear, discover them through pub sub and then be able to connect through whatever listener those peers are on.

I

So it's great for the future. One of the things that I'm gonna be working on before this gets released is actually being able to namespace your discovery so that you would be able to be like application specific namespacing for for peer discovery, instead of just binding to the to the global pre discovery. Space.

A

This is super cool, especially the name spacing path, because the way mdns works. It's basically shouts to everyone on the local network, hey I'm, here those are my addresses and in case of the web, that's sort of like a local network is the origin, so I believe in the joyous ipfs that like. If we talk about safe default, we probably would not put everyone on the same, like namespace I'm, not sure how that would scale if it gets a lot of usage.

A

However, if we like make it bind to an origin and everyone who's loading J's ipfs, only a sleepy 2p from the same origin can see each other I think that's much safer default.

A

However, like it's a module, so people could have like multiple instances like one for one origin, one for like across multiple origins for the same company or suite of products who knows, and they could be a global one, with like best efforts right, yeah, I, think.

I

A

See is the stuff.

I

That we hosts for like will end up deploying a relay server that listens to this, that it will probably have like maybe its own namespace, and so this kind of like handles like the Stardust or WebSockets, our server of like okay. This is everybody who's intended to be connecting to this point and then potentially, you could also subscribe to to multiple things, but that would be something I need to add to is being able to subscribe to multiple namespaces and respond to those queries appropriately. That would be that would be helpful, I think.

A

Yeah they took your first.

B

It's ok, I just wanted to say that I'm happy to see this. This prophecy foretold, then eventually, slowly bit by bit, all of the FS will be- and this is just a initial steps down the room.

A

Ups up its the world yeah and my question was what makes more sense to implement support for listening on multiple namespaces or just taking a namespace like a template in a constructor. And if someone wants to listen on multiple namespaces, they just initialize the same module multiple times. Is there like a performance consideration or is it just like I mean.

I

You could I mean the only I mean the only performance issue. You'd really have is like the extra objects which is tiny right, because it's not gonna affect anything else. You're still just subscribing to events so.

D

A

I just wondered how people are using when people create a custom Lippe to be set up or custom J's ipfs, but effectively pass a custom. Lis p2p set up how they, how they use the same. Do that you use the same module multiple times, it's hard to tell yeah.

I

Not currently, and partly because like live DP configuration is daunting at the moment, but we have an initiative to clean that up and make that like a much more functional approach to configuring, Lippa DB and that would provide a lot more flexibility to be able to say: okay, I'm, just gonna instantiate, this pub/sub module like five times and then pass that into the discovery services and then call it a day. So that would be an option in the future. Yeah.

A

That's what I was wondering like some people might may prefer that approach. Kugo I believe you have a hand raised yeah.

F

I would like to ask: how are you kind of testing this stuff? Are you handling like multiple browsers and checking if they can discover each other and stuff like that.

I

Yeah, that's what I'm gonna get to at the next spot like this, the module is pretty close to being ready. The major thing I have right now is I'm. Configuring I've got a repo where I'm just building out a pre-configured relay server, so that people will be able to like deploy it from a docker container and in there I have the test suite that uses this, and then it's running like easier to actually test across the browsers to make sure that, for your discovery is working so that relays are rich doing a lot of integration.

I

F

Cool one quick question: I'm looking I was looking through the code, and so you start using imagery the events package we talked about did you.

F

It was seamless like using it comparing to the normal event, emitter from null or the idea that some issues with it, the.

I

Main issue is that it does not emit or he does not a support, remove listener, and so that creates that created some problems, because low p2p actually is using remove listener instead of off in a min rate, only supports off, and so that was something that I just had to add and remove listener method to resolve that so there's some considerations there of it basically only applies to like its emitter. Ii only supports node, ten events, syntax.

G

Okay, thank you.

A

Super super excited for this one.

A

Cute too okie ours for our own connectivity, yep.

B

So this is just nice for me: I'm migrating all the carriers from where we drafted them and PR.

B

Because triplicates so, but one thing I found here, is that I I understand with general leave the impact, because I asked you all about it every week here in this meeting. The other ones as well, but with the impact of some of this work is. But if you could do me a favor and for your okrs there it's a list of issues, but it isn't clear what the impact of the some of those issues are and why this work needs to be done. So for each one of your cars for Rosco.

B

Can you just add a couple of contextual words there that say, because it will reduce page load time or reduce bundle, size or reduce the time for reconnects or browser based just add that little bit of contextual information there, because then I can more easily roll on that than to have the story that we're telling around our focus on increasing adoption, making browser, and it's faster, easier to use simpler, to use things like that.

A

Is it in in a spreadsheet somewhere or talking about.

B

Dude in the how can be and then I'm gonna migrate over there over to the sheet and then into the left, er 19 inch everything as well.

D

Cool. Thank you.

J

A

No releases this week unless I miss something and I believe we are at the end of agenda. So it's a time for open topics or we can. If there are not topics, we will probably wrap up sooner but think about open topics. Any questions concerns ideas. You want to share.

B

Has really pointed many best plug-ins, yet I.

A

Don't believe so I I had a discussion with with brave if they are supporting it right now. Cuz brave is.

C

A

But there are like few read at the time: they were a few versions behind bushes behind, so nothing should we that's a good question. Would that be a ground like a grant adoption grant of sorts I think.

B

So I would absolutely be interested in a micro grant to at least explore what the capabilities are and what like, if somebody spends a week, just focusing on identifying what they are. If we can use them, what do they give us any more browser or superpowers we wouldn't otherwise.

A

The mix makes sense. Probably we should should create yet another draft of a grant to discuss at least the problem waters. If someone is interested in a yeah.

B

I mean maybe that semen just to get bounty for 500 bucks for somebody to write up a memo, and then maybe you know following where it could be, and micro grant for it done for some of what.

E

Make sense added to the notes, so we.

A

A

Right, I know that we have Chris and Chris has been around for for a week or two. However, we got new.

C

A

On this called who's muted, however, maybe a gentle user could say a few words say hi. If.

J

Not it's fine! Oh hello, yeah hi! Everyone is this elder. I, wasn't sure if this was the birthplace to join I, just wanted to clerk in and hear the meeting in. You know with ipfs Pharrell now and had a great talk: I, don't the other day so yeah. That's me, Helder, nice to meet you all nothing much to end at this moment, but it was a great pleasure to be part of the meeting. So thanks for all you've been doing for ipfs, it's a great project that I have a good feelings towards.

A

B

A

B

Impetus to slowly like me, first deploy super useful I was.

A

About to share that that you are very a very modest person, because you are the person behind ipfs deploy, which is this very cool command-line tool you created initially, it's a super useful command line tool for quickly publishing website to ipfs, with things pinning with pinning services. So if someone is watching this and it's using this and now you know who created it.

J

A

J

A

It's super fun to see people like taking our ideas and like run with them and delivering something even better than what we've imagined it's the best feeling all right, folks and I did add one.

B

More thing that I can't believe I forgot, which is what Allen shared on Monday, which is the IQs browser sandbox project his little weekend project was a electron based browser that loads I'd be best directly similar to how beaker does with that and.

B

It's already on github. The idea is it's not we're, not even gonna ship it as a browser, but it's a place where people can experiment and we can show what the face. That's that browser would look like. We talked a lot about this in the past around having an experimental vehicle. It's where we can say, for example, implement the browser, design guidelines or even let me be a person's back and play with an accessibility accessible way. So where we can take some of the ideas we have be able to demo them in a way.

B

That's fast and easy top of the browser did this a couple of weeks months ago, where they released a similar idea where technology wired up to in browser nodes and with electron it makes this really really easy. So this is a place where, if you're interested well, then I'm source take a look back on it. It's a place where we can play with different developer patterns, user patterns, design patterns, things like location bar security privacy.

B

Hopefully, we use it as a tool for experimenting and prototyping some of the ideas of that and use it as a tool for communicating to browsers so that you can actually have a visceral and tangible experience of what these technologies might look like how they might behave. What so the visual communication challenges are, but it takes Alain for spinning yourself.

A

Should show the logo he.

D

A

B

There is a mobile.

D

mmm Yeah, just it just shows that tation to the detail, this even the logo right now.

C

You spent a whole 40 hours building at those, so who knows.

C

Yeah logos, look good, that's all those things you could end up wasting a lot of time on, but it certainly doesn't make it to see more professional and officials. That's cool yeah.

B

A lot of mark on the new tab that you open there.

A

Yeah definitely will be.

C

A

Useful space to experiment with even like, with the way the protocol handler, the old school protocol handler, looks like right now, it's using the paths which is like so far ahead.

A

Cool, so link to start is in in the notes. I'll give you some silence now in case you want to bring up topics proshare, something.

A

A

If you don't have any ad hoc thoughts, we can always make it bit shorter. This week it was super action-packed I feel like it was a lot. However, we finished 15 minutes earlier, so either I don't know it's the efficiency of doing something over and over again. I think all right folks, I think I'll give you back your 15 minutes. Thank you for everyone, who's watching. Thank you for everyone who shared projects or thoughts and ideas or updates and see you next week, I.