Ideas to enhance current extension

[vitvad]

So I had little bit time on this week end and merge some pull requests.
Seems I finally start realize how I want to improve extension.

First of all I want keep switching on/off states as simple as is now. So maybe better get rid from popup page suggested by @mhahmadi . Instead settings have to move to options page available through context menu on extension icon or in through extension list page in chrome.

features:

• edit and override headers for response (request) before sending to server on settings page.
• auto-responder to specified url request (functionality like in fiddler ) - will be good to debug 404/403/500 etc. or mock response
• settings page had to have tabs (settings, info tab with CORS related info resources)

as for current code:

• I want get rid from jQuery... no sense use it for $.isArray and .parents() method...
• Angular seems will be good to described functionality above, but I not really want use third party frameworks like Ionic or any other.
• tried to rewrite code and add tests will release 'dev' branch soon. (fortunately don't know how to run tests in chrome (maybe karma will help, but also want availability to turn on/off extension due tests running ))

@mhahmadi, @thegecko open to ideas. lets proceed conversation here.

[mhahmadi]

Hey Vitaly, I appreciate opening this discussion. I'll go over some of your notes,

• what headers are you thinking of overriding in the settings? the only one I could think of was the header for exposing the headers.
• I used auto-responder in fiddler once when demoing a feature while the backend wasn't done yet 😈. what use case are you trying to solve?
• I see more and more extensions use popups to manage their settings. out of 12 extensions I have one uses options page, another one context menu, and the other 10 use some sort of popup. it think it's a good UX practice. to me the context menu sounds oldschool and an options page too heavy to use all the time. lots of people don't know the shortcut to navigate to the options page. for them it means a lot heavier experience.
• I agree that Angular is definitely a good framework. however, i think it works best with jQuery in some areas where angular fails to cover. in fact Angular itself uses an implementation of jQeury. if there's a version of jQeury available it uses that instead.
• I don't root for Ionic mainly because it is a mobile and not a web framework. However it was so simple to put a decent looking popup together that i decided to give a shot. with a small CSS tweak, it delivered pretty well. if you're a fan of having tabs (settings, info etc) Ionic won't disappoint. you can easily add tabs that behave like mobile apps. Ionic is built for that after all. in the future we can choose a framework that's more stable or one we like better.

[thegecko]

I agree with all points, although using angular seems like overkill. You should be able to achieve a simple popup with jquery alone. Or knowing that we are only targeting chrome, vanilla JS may suffice.
Angular has a pretty steep learning curve and adding it into the mix may prove to be a barrier for entry for future developers.

From my perspective, the only missing feature of this tool is the ability to whitelist sites/IPs it is switched on for. I think the primary use case for this extension is as a development aid and as a developer I would only want it switched on for one or two domains. Heading out into the internet with this switched for everything is a major security concern.

@mhahmadi's recent pull requests looked like they would address this, but the popup didn't work for me, though (yet to investigate why).

I would also suggest keeping it simple and not try to add too many features :) Do one thing well.

/begin subjective comments :)
On a personal note, I have found angular to be counter-intuitive and awful to work with. Google have recognised it's shortcomings and v2 looks like it will be vastly different, another reason I would keep clear of it for any new work.

[graphee-gabriel]

From my perspective, the only missing feature of this tool is the ability to whitelist sites/IPs it is switched on for. I think the primary use case for this extension is as a development aid and as a developer I would only want it switched on for one or two domains. Heading out into the internet with this switched for everything is a major security concern.

Anything new on that end :-) ?