Improving the HTTP interface of BridgeDB: bridges.torproject.org
Hi list, it's high time to write a better website for https://bridges.torproject.org since it currently looks like the homepage of an academic professor. The new website should promote the use of pluggable transports (over normal bridges) and should be explanatory and friendly to end-users. I started writing a skeleton and some strings for the new website. I'm also attaching an image of how the website looked like in my head while I was writing the strings (although the person who codes, should choose the interface). Sathya (cc'ed) said that he would be interested in coding the web part. The relevant trac ticket is https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/7296 . If you have ideas on making the web frontend (or my proposed strings) better, please write them there. Thanks!
On Fri, Mar 8, 2013 at 11:26 PM, George Kadianakis <desnacked@riseup.net> wrote:
I started writing a skeleton and some strings for the new website. I'm also attaching an image of how the website looked like in my head while I was writing the strings (although the person who codes, should choose the interface). Sathya (cc'ed) said that he would be interested in coding the web part.
Here are the .htmls - https://people.torproject.org/~gsathya/html/index.html https://people.torproject.org/~gsathya/html/captcha.html https://people.torproject.org/~gsathya/html/bridges.html And the tarball - https://people.torproject.org/~gsathya/bridgedb.tar.gz
Sathyanarayanan Gunasekaran <gsathya@torproject.org> writes:
On Fri, Mar 8, 2013 at 11:26 PM, George Kadianakis <desnacked@riseup.net> wrote:
I started writing a skeleton and some strings for the new website. I'm also attaching an image of how the website looked like in my head while I was writing the strings (although the person who codes, should choose the interface). Sathya (cc'ed) said that he would be interested in coding the web part.
Here are the .htmls - https://people.torproject.org/~gsathya/html/index.html https://people.torproject.org/~gsathya/html/captcha.html https://people.torproject.org/~gsathya/html/bridges.html
And the tarball - https://people.torproject.org/~gsathya/bridgedb.tar.gz
Thanks! They look nice. I hope to start hacking BridgeDB to use these templates this week.
On Mon, 11 Mar 2013 11:08:36 +0530 Sathyanarayanan Gunasekaran <gsathya@torproject.org> wrote: In general, these look great. Some nitpicking items:
Here are the .htmls - https://people.torproject.org/~gsathya/html/index.html
1. The majority of users aren't going to know which obfsproxy browser they're using. I understand the difference, but to make a decision, we should only ship one obfsTBB and assume everyone is using it as a target for this site. I'm guessing we just call the obfsproxy-flashproxy-tbb as obfsTBB and move forward with it. 2. The correct email address is bridges@bridges.torproject.org 3. I think we should scrap "normal bridges" and only promoted obfuscated bridges. In the bigger picture, "normal bridges" are already subject to DPI attack and blocked in many places in the world based on Tor's network signature alone. All bridges should be obfsproxy bridges. -- Andrew http://tpo.is/contact pgp 0x6B4D6475
On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 4:22 PM, Andrew Lewman <andrew@torproject.is> wrote:
On Mon, 11 Mar 2013 11:08:36 +0530 Sathyanarayanan Gunasekaran <gsathya@torproject.org> wrote:
In general, these look great. Some nitpicking items:
Here are the .htmls - https://people.torproject.org/~gsathya/html/index.html
1. The majority of users aren't going to know which obfsproxy browser they're using. I understand the difference, but to make a decision, we should only ship one obfsTBB and assume everyone is using it as a target for this site. I'm guessing we just call the obfsproxy-flashproxy-tbb as obfsTBB and move forward with it.
2. The correct email address is bridges@bridges.torproject.org
3. I think we should scrap "normal bridges" and only promoted obfuscated bridges. In the bigger picture, "normal bridges" are already subject to DPI attack and blocked in many places in the world based on Tor's network signature alone. All bridges should be obfsproxy bridges.
I think we'll need to see larger numbers of bridges providing obfsproxy transports before considering these the only bridges we hand out. I believe we have about 5-10x as many "normal" bridges as "obfs" bridges, so I would be hesitant to have all the users of normal bridges abruptly switch over to the limited set of obfs bridges at this point... But I do agree that every bridge should also be an obfs bridge. --Aaron
-- Andrew http://tpo.is/contact pgp 0x6B4D6475 _______________________________________________ tor-dev mailing list tor-dev@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-dev
Are we also interested in translating this to other languages? Perhaps we can get the Farsi done ASAP, since we now have a country obfsproxy users coming to this page soon :) All the best, SiNA Andrew Lewman:
On Mon, 11 Mar 2013 11:08:36 +0530 Sathyanarayanan Gunasekaran <gsathya@torproject.org> wrote:
In general, these look great. Some nitpicking items:
Here are the .htmls - https://people.torproject.org/~gsathya/html/index.html
1. The majority of users aren't going to know which obfsproxy browser they're using. I understand the difference, but to make a decision, we should only ship one obfsTBB and assume everyone is using it as a target for this site. I'm guessing we just call the obfsproxy-flashproxy-tbb as obfsTBB and move forward with it.
2. The correct email address is bridges@bridges.torproject.org
3. I think we should scrap "normal bridges" and only promoted obfuscated bridges. In the bigger picture, "normal bridges" are already subject to DPI attack and blocked in many places in the world based on Tor's network signature alone. All bridges should be obfsproxy bridges.
-- “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Gandhi
On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 4:36 PM, SiNA Rabbani <sina@redteam.io> wrote:
Are we also interested in translating this to other languages? Perhaps we can get the Farsi done ASAP, since we now have a country obfsproxy users coming to this page soon :)
Yes. We already have BridgeDB on Transifex and the updated text will end up there too. -- Runa A. Sandvik
On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 4:36 PM, SiNA Rabbani <sina@redteam.io> wrote:
Are we also interested in translating this to other languages? Perhaps we can get the Farsi done ASAP, since we now have a country obfsproxy users coming to this page soon :)
Yes, I pointed george (asn) in the direction of my TorCheck repo (https://github.com/aagbsn/TorCheck) which outlines the sort of templating and i18 work that should make supporting BridgeDB's front end easier. --Aaron
All the best, SiNA
Andrew Lewman:
On Mon, 11 Mar 2013 11:08:36 +0530 Sathyanarayanan Gunasekaran <gsathya@torproject.org> wrote:
In general, these look great. Some nitpicking items:
Here are the .htmls - https://people.torproject.org/~gsathya/html/index.html
1. The majority of users aren't going to know which obfsproxy browser they're using. I understand the difference, but to make a decision, we should only ship one obfsTBB and assume everyone is using it as a target for this site. I'm guessing we just call the obfsproxy-flashproxy-tbb as obfsTBB and move forward with it.
2. The correct email address is bridges@bridges.torproject.org
3. I think we should scrap "normal bridges" and only promoted obfuscated bridges. In the bigger picture, "normal bridges" are already subject to DPI attack and blocked in many places in the world based on Tor's network signature alone. All bridges should be obfsproxy bridges.
-- “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Gandhi _______________________________________________ tor-dev mailing list tor-dev@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-dev
SiNA Rabbani <sina@redteam.io> wrote:
Are we also interested in translating this to other languages? Perhaps we can get the Farsi done ASAP, since we now have a country obfsproxy users coming to this page soon :)
All the best, SiNA
If everyone's open to interface ideas, a rough number of bridges per day in the past <whenever> would be great, in addition to the graph now. I know it's likely an estimate, but it would help outsiders like me make calculations. =) ~Griffin
Hi, On 11.03.2013 17:22, Andrew Lewman wrote:
2. The correct email address is bridges@bridges.torproject.org
Huh? Why is that? I think it's a bad idea. Why would you need "bridges" in there two times? You can set up bridges@tpo to forward to the bridges host, done. Same by the way for help/support. They should be help@tpo and support@tpo, and forward mails to the rt host. There is no reason to expose and require the mention of the used backend software. -- Moritz Bartl https://www.torservers.net/
On Tue, 12 Mar 2013 16:14:41 +0100 Moritz Bartl <moritz@torservers.net> wrote:
2. The correct email address is bridges@bridges.torproject.org
Huh? Why is that? I think it's a bad idea. Why would you need "bridges" in there two times? You can set up bridges@tpo to forward to the bridges host, done.
Same by the way for help/support. They should be help@tpo and support@tpo, and forward mails to the rt host. There is no reason to expose and require the mention of the used backend software.
We don't want to hide the systems and we want each system to manage it's own mail queues. The main torproject mail server is not designed to handle all mail for all tor services. Each system is independent of one another and allows for better scaling and reachability than having one massive mail hub. rt, bridges and gettor are flooded with mail, no need to flood other systems and back them up with unrelated email. We can scale each individual system as needed based on usage. People are just clicking links anyway, they might as well click the most direct one that goes directly to the system. -- Andrew http://tpo.is/contact pgp 0x6B4D6475
Sathyanarayanan Gunasekaran:
On Fri, Mar 8, 2013 at 11:26 PM, George Kadianakis <desnacked@riseup.net> wrote:
I started writing a skeleton and some strings for the new website. I'm also attaching an image of how the website looked like in my head while I was writing the strings (although the person who codes, should choose the interface). Sathya (cc'ed) said that he would be interested in coding the web part.
Here are the .htmls - https://people.torproject.org/~gsathya/html/index.html https://people.torproject.org/~gsathya/html/captcha.html https://people.torproject.org/~gsathya/html/bridges.html
Some links are sub-optimal in these mockups. Having link on "here", "these" or "this" is not really helpful. See <http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/noClickHere> and <http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www/click.html> for more details. I think it would be better to have these links phrased as: * I want [obfs2 bridges] for tor-obfsproxy-browser. * I want [obfs2 bridges] or [obfs3 bridges] for tor-flashproxy-pyobfsproxy. * I want [direct bridges] for other bundles like tor-browser. * This website allows you to get [bridge addresses]. * Please read the [introduction to obfuscated bridges and pluggable transports]. The square brackets delimit the linked part. I've replaced "direct bridges" because I think "direct" is probably a better wording than "normal". The norm might shift to obfsproxy bridges in the next months… What do you think? -- Jérémy Bobbio .''`. lunar@debian.org : :Ⓐ : # apt-get install anarchism `. `'` `-
Sathyanarayanan Gunasekaran:
On Fri, Mar 8, 2013 at 11:26 PM, George Kadianakis <desnacked@riseup.net> wrote:
I started writing a skeleton and some strings for the new website. I'm also attaching an image of how the website looked like in my head while I was writing the strings (although the person who codes, should choose the interface). Sathya (cc'ed) said that he would be interested in coding the web part.
Here are the .htmls - https://people.torproject.org/~gsathya/html/index.html https://people.torproject.org/~gsathya/html/captcha.html https://people.torproject.org/~gsathya/html/bridges.html
Some links are sub-optimal in these mockups. Having link on "here", "these" or "this" is not really helpful. See <http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/noClickHere> and <http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www/click.html> for more details.
I think it would be better to have these links phrased as:
* I want [obfs2 bridges] for tor-obfsproxy-browser. * I want [obfs2 bridges] or [obfs3 bridges] for tor-flashproxy-pyobfsproxy. * I want [direct bridges] for other bundles like tor-browser. * This website allows you to get [bridge addresses]. * Please read the [introduction to obfuscated bridges and pluggable transports].
The square brackets delimit the linked part. I've replaced "direct bridges" because I think "direct" is probably a better wording than "normal". The norm might shift to obfsproxy bridges in the next months…
What do you think?
-- Jérémy Bobbio .''`. lunar@debian.org : :Ⓐ : # apt-get install anarchism `. `'` `- _______________________________________________ tor-dev mailing list tor-dev@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-dev
I'm attaching a stupid mockup we came up with during the dev meeting. I'm also attaching some hopefully improved FAQ-section strings. Does anyone want to fix Sathya's templates? :) You can find them here: https://people.torproject.org/~gsathya/html/index.html https://people.torproject.org/~gsathya/html/captcha.html https://people.torproject.org/~gsathya/html/bridges.html Some notes on the mockup: - We decided to not rely on users knowing the filename of their bundles. The idea instead is to have a "Get latest obfsbundle" button and a "Get bridges" button which gives you bridges appropriate for that bundle (in the beginning it should give you 2-3 normal bridges, and 1-2 obfuscated bridges suitable for your bundle) - We decided to stop distinguishing between obfuscated and normal bridges. Users should simply not care. They should just put those strings to their bundles (using Vidalia) and that should work automagically. - We should somehow make it clear that users don't need to re-download the TBB if they have the latest version. - We tried to keep the FAQ section minimal and easy to understand. Did we miss anything? - This is a temporary interface. It's designed to be quick to write, and should work with the current codebase of BridgeDB. In the future, we can think of more advanced BridgeDB setupos.
On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 10:35 PM, George Kadianakis <desnacked@riseup.net> wrote:
I'm attaching a stupid mockup we came up with during the dev meeting. I'm also attaching some hopefully improved FAQ-section strings.
Updated mockup - https://people.torproject.org/~gsathya/bridgedb/
On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 12:17:18AM -0400, Sathyanarayanan Gunasekaran wrote:
On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 10:35 PM, George Kadianakis <desnacked@riseup.net> wrote:
I'm attaching a stupid mockup we came up with during the dev meeting. I'm also attaching some hopefully improved FAQ-section strings.
Updated mockup - https://people.torproject.org/~gsathya/bridgedb/
Should the word "Vidalia" really be displayed there? How would a typical user know what a Vidalia is? - Ian
On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 11:50 AM, Ian Goldberg <iang@cs.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 12:17:18AM -0400, Sathyanarayanan Gunasekaran wrote:
On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 10:35 PM, George Kadianakis <desnacked@riseup.net> wrote:
I'm attaching a stupid mockup we came up with during the dev meeting. I'm also attaching some hopefully improved FAQ-section strings.
Updated mockup - https://people.torproject.org/~gsathya/bridgedb/
Should the word "Vidalia" really be displayed there? How would a typical user know what a Vidalia is?
How about "Tell Tor to use the bridges"? Users don't know what Vidalia is (and in the future there won't be a Vidalia either, it will all be integrated in the Tor Browser). -- Runa A. Sandvik
On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 4:17 AM, Sathyanarayanan Gunasekaran <gsathya@torproject.org> wrote:
On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 10:35 PM, George Kadianakis <desnacked@riseup.net> wrote:
I'm attaching a stupid mockup we came up with during the dev meeting. I'm also attaching some hopefully improved FAQ-section strings.
Updated mockup - https://people.torproject.org/~gsathya/bridgedb/
Will the "Get bridges" link return a few bridges, one of each transport? Will bridges@tpo return the same output? -- Runa A. Sandvik
On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 4:17 AM, Sathyanarayanan Gunasekaran <gsathya@torproject.org> wrote:
On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 10:35 PM, George Kadianakis <desnacked@riseup.net> wrote:
I'm attaching a stupid mockup we came up with during the dev meeting. I'm also attaching some hopefully improved FAQ-section strings.
Updated mockup - https://people.torproject.org/~gsathya/bridgedb/
Will the "Get bridges" link return a few bridges, one of each transport? Will bridges@tpo return the same output?
My current ungracious plan is to return a couple of normal bridges (since we have lots of them) and a small number of obfuscated bridges. This plan aims to minimize code that needs to be written for BridgeDB and minimize number of obfuscated bridges that are leaked to each user (since we only have a few at the moment (around 200 of them)). Specifically, for now, I was thinking of returning two normal bridges and one (or two, if we feel generous) obfuscated bridge for each user. These numbers are completely arbitrary at the moment and ideally we should prepare a formula to calculate how many bridges of each kind we should return based on how many we've got. Finally, for this plan to work, we need to hack BridgeDB to return multiple kinds of obfuscated bridges at the same type, but this shouldn't be too painful to do.
Sathyanarayanan Gunasekaran <gsathya@torproject.org> writes:
On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 10:35 PM, George Kadianakis <desnacked@riseup.net> wrote:
I'm attaching a stupid mockup we came up with during the dev meeting. I'm also attaching some hopefully improved FAQ-section strings.
Updated mockup - https://people.torproject.org/~gsathya/bridgedb/ _______________________________________________ tor-dev mailing list tor-dev@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-dev
FWIW, status here is that we uploaded the strings of the new page to get translated: https://www.transifex.com/projects/p/torproject/resource/2-bridgedb-bridgedb... We plan to deploy the new page next week. Please help around with the translations if you can.
participants (10)
-
Aaron -
Andrew Lewman -
George Kadianakis -
Griffin Boyce -
Ian Goldberg -
Jérémy Bobbio -
Moritz Bartl -
Runa A. Sandvik -
Sathyanarayanan Gunasekaran -
SiNA Rabbani