19:03:07 <mikeperry> #startmeeting app-dev
19:03:07 <MeetBot> Meeting started Tue Nov  3 19:03:07 2015 UTC.  The chair is mikeperry. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot.
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19:03:47 <mikeperry> ok! welcome to the first dedicated Tor Applications Team meeting!
19:04:10 <sukhe> hi!
19:04:22 <arthuredelstein> hi everyone
19:04:23 <isabela> hi
19:04:26 <mikeperry> so today we're going to discuss UX and i18n issues, and of course any other points of cross-app coordination or problemsolving that will help people
19:05:01 <mikeperry> I guess most immediately relevant is Tor Messenger's recent release
19:05:18 <mikeperry> are either sukhe or arlolra here?
19:05:37 <sukhe> mrphs: hi, yes
19:05:41 <sukhe> er sorry, mikeperry ^
19:05:50 <sukhe> boklm: ^
19:06:10 <mikeperry> great!
19:06:12 * boklm is here too
19:06:26 <mrphs> sukhe: good job pinging me! this meeting seem to about ux :D
19:06:28 <mikeperry> solid
19:06:53 * mrphs lurks
19:07:25 <mikeperry> yes, so my one piece of news is that Greg Norcie (from IU - he did the first major usability study on TBB) has offered to write up what he believes are some potential "stop points" for new users using Tor Messenger
19:07:33 <mikeperry> he should be sending that to tor-dev soon
19:07:43 <GeKo> he did already
19:07:50 <mikeperry> oh wow
19:07:59 <sukhe> just saw that
19:08:08 <mikeperry> my mail fetching is still janky. I am doing it manually to make sure that more mail doesn't disappear on me :)(
19:08:36 <mikeperry> good timing then
19:09:20 <mikeperry> I have a couple of comments, but I do want to say that everything seems a lot nicer since I last tried it (0.0.5/0.0.6 I think)
19:09:30 <sukhe> that's good to hear
19:09:49 <mrphs> oh it's about Tor Messenger, not browser
19:10:06 <mikeperry> it's about any user-facing application that we make or our community makes
19:10:31 <mikeperry> but I decided to start off with Tor Messenger, so we have something to talk about to get started
19:12:26 <sukhe> mikeperry: perhaps we can start with your feedback then
19:14:04 <mikeperry> one thing I noticed was that my first message after setting up the app caused a key generation, and it wasn't clear if the message was sent unencrypted or encrypted. it was also weird for this key generation to be a popup that I had to click OK for it to go away
19:14:53 <sukhe> so this is the OTR key generation. all local.
19:15:06 <sukhe> and we have a ticket for this and this is one of the things in our to-do
19:15:25 <mikeperry> another thing is that for XMPP, we may want to provide a list of providers that support in-band or easy registration, or a list of ones that support hidden services or something. not sure. if nothing else, an example server might help people figure out the account entry UI?
19:15:40 <sukhe> (if anyone is curious: https://github.com/arlolra/ctypes-otr/issues/20)
19:16:04 <isabela> sukhe: tx
19:16:28 <sukhe> mikeperry: good idea. would you recommend that goes in the docs or in the app?
19:16:51 <mikeperry> I have also had reports from a friend who was unable to get jabber.ccc.de account to work. I think it was related to the TLS cert being unofficial. but it prevented him from being able to figure out how to use it at all. that might be an OK case, because bad TLS certs might not be something we want to make easy to get around, but wroth noting for consideration of including a cert for that particular
19:16:57 <mikeperry> server or something (since it is very popular)
19:17:14 <sukhe> mikeperry: that's odd because we include the jabber.ccc.de leaf cert
19:17:27 <sukhe> maybe your friend tried using the HS service instead?
19:17:35 <mikeperry> I don't have an account there, so I couldn't test it. I am not sure what he did
19:18:10 <flexlibris> hi i also can't get riseup's hidden service to work on it
19:18:25 <ailanthus> *lurks slightly and with friendliness*
19:18:26 <isabela> i got it to work
19:18:42 <isabela> you do need to accept an exception
19:19:28 <x42> if i want to connect to oftc via tor messenger - should i prefere the .onion address?
19:19:29 <sukhe> mikeperry: so yeah, must have been the onion because the jabber.ccc.de is there
19:20:06 <flexlibris> isabela: when i try to add an exception it says "unable to obtain identification status for this site"
19:20:36 <sukhe> x42: sure. (is there an "official" OFTC onion?)
19:21:38 <x42> no
19:21:41 <sukhe> flexlibris: do you get this by any chance? https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/attachment/ticket/17517/tor-messenger-add-exception.png
19:21:44 <x42> afaik
19:22:13 <x42> but why should i prefere .onion - is it more anonymous? no, right?
19:22:25 <flexlibris> sukhe: yes and when i try to add an exception it says "unable to obtain identification status for this site"
19:22:26 * isabela likes Greg suggestion on how to display the list of protocols
19:22:39 <mikeperry> sukhe: I guess a more general comment about the onboarding wrt to your question about documentation is the newish UX idea of explaining to users what they need to know in the UI when they need to know it. like if they click XMPP, it explains a bit about an XMPP account, where to get one, and how to sign in, and how to talk to people. isabela pointed out that this style of onboarding was something ri
19:22:44 <mikeperry> cochet does well (and isa probably has tons of ideas/suggestions here from her experince doing this type of thing at twitter)
19:23:34 <sukhe> mikeperry: ok good idea. noted.
19:24:01 <mikeperry> and this type of in-process tooltips/explaination text could help a lot of aspects here. it may be tricky to make it look OK with the contraints of XUL, but something to consider if we get more resources for this project, as a longer-term plan
19:24:51 <isabela> sukhe boklm -> once I am out of reports pile i can help with more concrete suggestions on that
19:25:17 <sukhe> thanks
19:26:48 <mikeperry> finally, we should definitely make it a TBB team TODO to have Tor Launcher figure out if another instance of it is running another tor that can be shared. there was a dev meeting session about this that mcs lead, but I had a conflict with another session at the time
19:27:04 <isabela> +1
19:27:10 <mikeperry> but it seems like we could make that bit a lot better for users who have both tor messanger and tor browser, so they don't have to do the wizard twice
19:27:47 <sukhe> yes definitely
19:28:04 <sukhe> https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2015SummerDevMeeting/TorProcessShare (meeting notes if anyone is following this)
19:28:07 <mikeperry> esp since in this case it is the same code more or less on both places, so having it detect and coordinate with itself should be a lot easier, technically speaking, that solving the problem for all apps. if nothing else since it can be just one person
19:28:17 <mikeperry> or rather one small team. mcs+brade
19:28:42 <arlolra> https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/10950
19:29:00 <GeKo> getting th branding right might be a little nit tricky
19:29:06 <GeKo> *bit
19:29:12 <mikeperry> I am not sure when this will fit on our roadmap, as we'll be busy with e10s stuff too
19:29:32 <GeKo> currently i am seeing the tor browser logo when i start tor messenger which is a bit confusing
19:29:54 <mikeperry> speaking of which, has Mozilla communicated to either the instandbird or thunderbird folks about what will happen to those platforms after the switch to e10s?
19:30:09 <mcs> There is a Tor Launcher option to hide the logo or use a different logo
19:30:10 <mikeperry> will they just leave e10s disabled, I wonder? and then what about bitrot?
19:30:15 <sukhe> GeKo: the initial logo is Tor Messenger, I didn't update the second one on purpose because I thought it reflected Tor in general
19:30:26 <GeKo> mcs: aha!
19:31:08 <sukhe> mikeperry: no idea about this. we can ask the Instantbird team
19:31:38 <mikeperry> yeah, probably wise. are they following rapid release still? or was that just for your OTR patches that you needed that?
19:31:49 <sukhe> mcs: if you got it handy, what's the option? :) because right now we are patching it
19:31:50 <isabela> we should deal with all these branding stuff soon - me and mrphs met with simply secure and they will help create some guidelines that will help us with this stuff
19:32:10 <mcs> sukhe: I will check.
19:32:32 <sukhe> mikeperry: they are, but we are
19:32:55 <sukhe> building on top of comm-release on the THUNDERBIRD_41 tag
19:33:55 <sukhe> a). because this helps us to audit security up to a particular commit, b). much easier to maintain the patches
19:34:05 <sukhe> though we should ideally be basing it on ESR
19:34:16 <sukhe> one of the other things we plan to do from the next release
19:34:45 <mcs> For the Tor Launcher logo issue, see #12451 and #14122.
19:34:48 <sukhe> isabela: that's great
19:35:13 <sukhe> mcs: thanks
19:36:16 <mikeperry> interesting. so they should start seeing e10s suport at least in the tree, but maybe not enabled.
19:36:56 <sukhe> possible. though since we haven't talked to them about this, we don't know
19:37:59 <mikeperry> so for the other topic that GeKo mentioned in the mail: i18n. is instantbird localized? and do you have any resources/dtd files/properties files specific to tor messanger that we should add to transifex?
19:38:53 <sukhe> we did that already. it's there in Transifex. I think we are missing a few resources though
19:39:27 <isabela> Phoul1: ping
19:39:32 <sukhe> sherief did the arabic translation using Instantbird's system (which is basically a hg repository). so that makes it easier for us to work with. the arabic translation of Instantbird is complete and is the only translation that works
19:39:33 <mikeperry> as in they are still static strings in the code, or missing some entire dtd files, etc?
19:39:44 <isabela> sukhe: what langs?
19:39:47 <sukhe> missing entire dtd files IIRC
19:40:33 <mikeperry> and are these used in XPIs that you add, or in the main mozilla-central build tree?
19:40:36 <conradev> Hi everyone! Just joining the meeting now. I'm Conrad, and I'm working on the Tor iOS VPN thingie.
19:40:48 <isabela> hi conradev
19:41:20 <mikeperry> hello!
19:43:33 <sukhe> Phoul1 tried uploading the complete translations, but ran into a problem which I can't recall
19:44:05 <sukhe> anyways, if the translator uses Instantbird's system, it's easier for us because then we generate a lang pack, set useragent.locale to $lang and it works
19:44:18 <sukhe> though maybe there is a better way and if so, we should know about it :)
19:44:35 <isabela> cool
19:44:45 <sukhe> the only reason we ever used Transifex was because some translators didn't know how to use hg. and then some said they won't translate if we don't use Transifex ;)
19:46:29 <mikeperry> and instantbird's system is based on hg?
19:46:44 <mikeperry> I thought Mozilla used to have a web interface... at least for addon translation..
19:46:59 <sukhe> yup
19:47:11 <sukhe> (yes as in instantbird is based on hg)
19:47:20 <sukhe> https://hg.instantbird.org/l10n/en-US/ and https://hg.instantbird.org/l10n/ar for arabic
19:47:35 <sukhe> mikeperry: what is it called? the interface?
19:47:46 <mikeperry> so if there is no web interface, I suppose you could script some glue to merge stuff from transifex into an hg branch that you use?
19:48:10 <mikeperry> I don't remember. this was like 8 years ago, and the one I saw was only for addons. I never looked at the full Firefox one
19:48:37 <mcs> a lot of Firefox and TBird add-ons use http://babelzilla.org/ for translations
19:48:40 <sukhe> mikeperry: yes, that's the plan. migrate to Transifex, pull translations from there, generate a lang pack and set the useragent pref
19:48:43 <sukhe> mikeperry: does that seem right?
19:49:21 <mcs> I don't know what Mozilla uses for core Firefox translation
19:50:17 <mcs> (but I just found https://localize.mozilla.org/ so maybe that is it?  anyway….)
19:50:26 <isabela> i know transifex has its problems but I am for centralizing how we do translations in one platform/way because that makes it easier for volunteers to collaborate with more than one project
19:50:58 <sukhe> isabela: yeah that is why we agreed to use it though I tried hard not to :)
19:51:13 <isabela> hehe
19:51:20 <isabela> yep
19:52:02 <isabela> mcs: they run their own crowdsourcing platform it seems https://localize.mozilla.org/about/
19:52:29 <mcs> isabela: thanks. Mozilla is pretty good at inventing their own tools ;)
19:52:46 <isabela> http://docs.translatehouse.org/projects/translate-toolkit/en/1.11.0-rc1/releases/1.10.0.html
19:52:59 <isabela> yeah
19:54:16 <mcs> ah, so maybe that is not 100% a Mozilla invention then.
19:54:28 <mcs> but from their community
19:54:31 <mikeperry> oh hrmm. I remember really hating pootle for some reason, but the details are fuzzy
19:55:47 <mikeperry> but yeah, which system we use I guess will depend on how much we diverge and how much tor-specific stuff we need to translate. having one place for people to go to do that will have lots of consistency-in-translation benefits, etc
19:56:24 <isabela> i am for now to stay in transifex because they already have a translator community that could migrate to help our projects as well :)
19:56:54 <mikeperry> yeah
19:56:55 <sukhe> yeah
19:57:00 <isabela> and folks like the localization lab works with it too
20:00:13 <mikeperry> oh, we should be able to get you guys apple dev accounts and a cert soon
20:00:19 <mikeperry> for norcie's DMG issue
20:00:26 <mikeperry> we need to figure out how that will work for TBB
20:00:50 <mikeperry> oh man, we spent the whole hour on Tor Messenger now, though. conradev - did you have any news about the iOS VPN?
20:01:19 <mikeperry> or did anyone else what to jump in?
20:01:50 <conradev> Just small updates, really. I've been working on the network part (writing in Rust), and I have DNS working.
20:02:49 <conradev> I have a basic layout of a design (very simple), but no mockups yet, so can't work on anything like i18n yet
20:03:52 <mikeperry> are you working with Nathan, Mike Tigas, and Chris Ballinger? or is your stuff still independent from theirs?
20:04:39 <conradev> mikeperry: I'm working with them (and keeping them updated, we have a Slack to chat with), but so far they haven't had much chance to help out
20:05:28 <conradev> It's all open source (github.com/icepa) but not at the point yet where it should be evaluated
20:05:41 <mikeperry> ah, ok great. I recall at the dev meeting realizing that there might be two independent VPN efforts underway
20:06:05 <conradev> Oh haha, definitely not to my knowledge (unless you count Orbot ;))
20:09:02 * mikeperry remembers that he never forwarded the UX principal mail that Nima sent him way back in July. I guess it's relevant to this meeting
20:09:11 <mikeperry> I just forwarded it to tor-dev
20:09:46 <mikeperry> principles too
20:10:14 <mikeperry> ok, any other questions/requests for UX review, or things for discussion right now?
20:11:34 <mikeperry> baf incoming..
20:11:44 <arlolra> https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/17411
20:11:44 <mikeperry> #endmeeting *baf*