Mozilla Rally extension and web notifications demo.

The purpose of this repository is to give examples of possible ways to notify users via browser extensions and websites.

Extension:

• browser notifications
  • automatically opted-in, set in extension manifest permissions
• badging toolbar button
• show "page action" in URL bar
• add UI to web pages via content scripts
• open a new window/tab

Web

• browser notifications
  • each site needs to ask user to explicitly opt-in
• serviceworker
  • background actions, such as syncing data and "push" notifications
  • in practice, this will likely be a browser notification
• pass messages to extensions
  • trusted sites can trigger actions in the extension
• open a new window/tab

Email

• self-explanatory / no demo needed, but currently users need to opt-in
• authentication would mean that we have a valid email address for all users
  • we need to continue to be careful to separate email required for basic functioning vs. marketing
• could link to website from email, which could then pass messages to extensions.

Outstanding questions

• how often is too often to annoy users?
  • for example, we bother users after install and on every browser restart when the study is installed but core is missing
• how much should we worry new tabs/windows opening out-of-the-blue?
  • is it better form to send a notification and have clicking that trigger?

Install dependencies

From the cloned repository directory, install all the NPM dependencies:

npm install .

Supported NPM commands

The template comes with a set of pre-defined NPM commands (to run as npm run <command>) to help study authors:

• build: assembles the final addon. The bundler generated code is saved in the dist/ directory.
• dev: assembles the addon in developer mode. In this mode data doesn't get submitted but, instead, is dumped to the Browser Console. This mode allows for a smoother development process.
• lint: run linting on the add-on code.
• package: packages the final archive containing the bundled addon, is saved in the web-ext-artifacts directory.
• start: build the addon and run a Firefox instance and side-load the add-on for manual testing or debugging purposes.
• test-integration: perform the provided integration test for the final addon.
• watch: assembles the addon in developer mode, then runs the browser and watches the source code for changes, automatically reloading the extension when needed.

Manual testing in the browser

To test, either load as a temporary add-on in Firefox (about:debugging) or Chrome ("developer mode" in chrome://extensions) or use npm run start.