Re: [widgets] WARP usability issue

2011/5/12 Marcos Caceres <marcosscaceres@gmail.com>:
> The following rule is too restrictive in WARP:
>
> "If origin is not a valid IRI, *if it has components other than scheme
> and iauthority*, if it has no host component, or if it has a iuser
> info component, then this element is in error and the user agent must
> ignore this element."
>
> For the "if it has components other than scheme and iauthority" part,
> this means that a developer who writes:
>
> "http://www.w3.org/"
>
> Will have their access request ignored because of the slash. While I
> was at Opera working on extensions, we noticed in the Opera Extensions
> catalog that people were doing all sorts of "interesting" things with
> WARP declarations (e.g., adding "/*" and other things assuming some
> kind of pattern matching).
>
> Anyway, an easy solution is to simply ignore any "/" or simply ignore
> all but the scheme and iauthority.
>
> WDYT?

Shouldn't validators / markets automatically send an error with a
suggested fix instead of allowing publication?

Could you provide an actual example instance? I'm guessing you can
point to a public widget and a public server.

As it's origin based, and new, I think it's best to try to push
producers to create correct content.

I really wish that UAs and markets would provide a way for UAs and
Users to provide feedback about bugs to Authors. On the Web, that's
impossible, but for things where there are aggregators who collect
content and require accounts for uploading, it seems like it should be
a lot easier to manage.

Certainly for addons.mozilla.org, it's possible for site admins to
give feedback to extension authors about Bugs, Errors, Code Quality,
and general user feedback.

For Ovi, there were plans (no idea what happened to them, I presume
they're still there) to perform automated tests before providing them
to customers. For a widget, that should involve trying to install it
into a user agent, and probably poking a couple of coordinates or
buttons. It should be possible to recognize errors during testing for
average cases and give feedback before the widget is made available to
customers.

Apple's store submission process seems to involve at least some
automatic and some manual testing. I presume most stores will have
similar processes. So it seems like this should be something which a
testing UA should be able to detect and report, and which a
Store/MarketPlace should be able to manage. UAs should also be able to
collect anonymous reporting statistics and offer their users the
option of sending them to their widget vendors.

If a WARP failure is causing the widget to break, then the user is
likely to be unhappy and the user would probably want to send the
negative feedback.

Having a channel for sending feedback is a good thing, for Widgets,
for Applications, and for web pages. And getting vendors in the habit
of handling such feedback by providing basic instances where it is
likely to happen seems like a good stepping stone to a healthier
ecosystem.

Received on Thursday, 12 May 2011 12:06:43 UTC