[tor-talk] Shutting down the relay-search service by the end of the year

[Christian]

On 07.01.2014 13:44, Karsten Loesing wrote:
> On 1/7/14 1:32 PM, Christian wrote:
>> Hi,
>> sorry for the late answer.
>>
>> On 30.12.2013 16:53, Arlo Breault wrote:
>>> I wrote a little proof of concept rendering globe server-side with phantom.js
>>> https://github.com/makepanic/globe/pull/42
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sunday, December 29, 2013 at 1:42 AM, Karsten Loesing wrote:
>>>
>>
>> I like this idea but don't know what the better approach would be.
>>
>> Is the plan to avoid a JavaScript client side implementation as a
>> relay/bridge search service or just provide a fallback for users that
>> have JavaScript disabled?
> 
> I guess whatever works in browsers that don't have JavaScript is fine.
> 
> I'm unclear what the difference between your two options is.  Does the
> second option check whether the user has JavaScript enabled or disabled
> and return a different website, and does the first always return the
> website that requires no JavaScript?

The implementation by Arlo uses phantomjs (http://phantomjs.org/) to
render the current globe url in a headless browser and puts it inside
the <noscript> element.

If the user has JavaScript enabled the noscript element is hidden and
the browser uses the clientside JavaScript for routing, templating and
onionoo requests.

If the user has JavaScript disabled, the clientside JavaScript code will
not execute and the content of <noscript> is visible.

Arlo changed the routing behavior of Emberjs to use the history-api
which allows routing without the hashchange event (/#/top10 becomes
/top10 in browsers that support it http://caniuse.com/history ).

This means that if the user without JavaScript wants to see another view
he has to start a new requests and phantomjs renders the new page and
the server returns the html.
The user with JavaScript enabled uses the clientside templates and can
continue without a request.

In the end they both of them see the same output but the user without
JavaScript has to start a new requests if he wants to see another view.

Please correct me if I'm wrong Arlo.

> 
> What's the easiest for you to maintain?

I'm not sure but the phantomjs implementation requires less amount of
work to provide a JavaScript free way to search bridges and relays. We
only have to make some minor changes (expand the advances search by
default, fix fontawesome icons, ...).
Another advantage is that we can continue to use the current test/build
setup.

Cheers,
Christian