On 7 Dec 2015, at 02:52, Karsten Loesing karsten@torproject.org wrote:
Signed PGP part Hi everyone,
I posted some thoughts on Scaling Tor Metrics [0] almost two weeks ago and received very useful feedback from George, David, Thomas, and Letty. Thanks for that! ...
...
So, one task would be: #1 decide whether we can still ignore JavaScript and what it has to offer. I agree that D3.js is cool, I even used it myself in the past, though I know very little about it. This decision would mean that we develop new visualizations in D3.js and phase out the existing R/ggplot2 visualizations one by one. This is a tough decision, but one with a lot of potential. I understand how we're excited about this as developers, but I'd want to ask Metrics users about this first.
I run Tor Browser in high security mode by default. That disables JavaScript on all sites. I like being able to browse metrics without turning JavaScript on (except for the bubble graphs[0]).
But we already require users to turn on JavaScript for the bubble graphs, globe, etc.
So it's not an unreasonable decision to require it.
... One important and still somewhat low-hanging fruit is: #10 give external developers more support when developing visualizations that could later be added to Metrics. This requires better documentation, but it also requires making it easier to install Tor Metrics locally and test new additions before submitting them. The latter is a good goal, but we're not there yet. The documentation part doesn't seem crazy though. David, if you don't mind being the guinea pig yet once more, I'd want to try this out with your latest visualizations. This is pending on the JavaScript decision though.
Do David's visualisations already use JavaScript? We could always do what we did with the bubble graphs, and make (another) part of the metrics site use JavaScript.
Or are we waiting to choose a language before doing any new work?
Tim
[0]: https://metrics.torproject.org/bubbles.html
Tim Wilson-Brown (teor)
teor2345 at gmail dot com PGP 968F094B
teor at blah dot im OTR CAD08081 9755866D 89E2A06F E3558B7F B5A9D14F