Firefox/Projects/Herdict
Contents
Summary
Explore integrating the functionality of Herdict with Firefox's network error page.
Also see Atul's Pitch for a quick 2.5 minute overview of what this is about (requires Firefox >=3.5).
Current Status
Boriss, Laura Miyakawa and Atul had a phone meeting on April 27, 2010 to discuss the status of the project. Notes:
- The heuristic for mapping Herdict raw data (the # of reports inaccessible vs. accessible) to definitive statements that can help average users (see Boriss' mockups) is unclear, and will probably need to be iterated on.
- Exactly what Herdict's data can help average users with, especially insofar as Boriss' mockups are concerned, is unclear: the statement "Your network Firewall is preventing access to this website", for instance, simply doesn't appear to be something that Herdict's data can imply.
- A number of aspects of Boriss' mockups like "Did you mean" are actually covered by cbartley's patch in bug bug 482874.
- Atul's addon prototype is missing two key features: a "What is Herdict?" link and a mechanism to submit data on an inaccessible site to Herdict.
The next steps are for Boriss and Atul to regroup and figure out what the scope of this project is: if Herdict can only help us with statements like "This site is being reported as inaccessible in China", do we want to limit its scope to that, or do we want to expand the project's scope to include more things that can help make network error pages more helpful, such as bug 482874?
After the scoping is determined, we'll figure out what the roadmap for the project is.
Previous History
atul made a prototype XPI on 4/19/2010. See bug 552992 comment 1 for more information on this.
boriss wrote a blog post featuring her mock-ups on 1/4/2010.
On 12/23/2009, atul and boriss had a meeting with Herdict team members Laura Miyakawa and Jeffrey Licht to discuss mock-ups boriss had created.
Previously, on 12/4/2009, atul and boriss had an initial meeting with Herdict team members Laura Miyakawa and Jeffrey Licht to explore Firefox integration.
Next Steps
- See Current Status section.
Related Bugs
bug 552992 - Create an addon prototyping Herdict-Firefox integration
Team
Designs
See boriss' blog post from 1/4/2010 for mock-ups.
Goals/Use Cases
- Explore adding Herdict's functionality to the Firefox network error page.
Non Goals
- Adding the Herdict "sheep" icon to the Navigation Toolbar, or other dashboard-like functionality. For such use cases, the full-featured Herdict Firefox Add-on can be used.
Related Blog Posts
- Better SSL Error Screens - Zachary Weinberg's take on how SSL certificate error screens can be made more helpful through the application of Herdict data. Feb 16, 2010.
- Herdict-Firefox Integration and Better HTML Presentations - Atul's blog post announcing the Herdict pitch video. Feb 10, 2010.
- Herdict: The Verdict of the Herd - Atul's blog post about Herdict from August 2008
- Herdict and its Tasty, Anonymized, Aggregated Data - Post by boriss on Jan 4, 2010
Other Materials
- Atul's prototype add-on and its source code
- Herdict Server API (PDF)
- Atul's Pitch
