[tyndale-devel] Crosswire bookmarks and initial sketch of user login

[Chris Burrell]

Sounds good.

I think we might want to make a distinction with offline and not-logged in!
For example you can be

online, have an account and be logged in
online, have an account but not be logged in
online, not have an account
offline (using the offline version). The same paradigm is currently in place
(i.e. you can be logged in or not logged in offline)

On the latter, part of me wants to ensure people are always logged in when
they are using the "offline desktop" version. However meaning they can login
means they can have different "profiles", which is an added bonus we get for
free. Perhaps we can strike a middle ground and have the offline version log
them on as a "default" user. The default user is disabled by default on the
online version. They can "register" new users for new profiles...

This could be useful in places other than home - e.g. a shared computer in a
computer centre where users don't have the same account... or if people want
to be able to share data on the same computer/network, but have different
identities.

Chris


On 22 March 2011 17:34, David Instone-Brewer <Technical at tyndale.cam.ac.uk>wrote:

>  Sounds right to store in cookies when offline.
> What about a once-per-session message to say "Working offline, so data is
> saved only on this computer" or something like that.
>
> David IB
>
>
>
> At 16:16 22/03/2011, Chris Burrell wrote:
>
> Sounds good, so basically we want to store it in the database.
>
> Do we also want to store it in the cookie? I can see issues where for some
> reason persisting failed (say connection dropped, or user leaves before
> response is acknowledged). At which point, we end up having cookie/database
> out of sync.
>
> An alternative would be store in the cookie if not logged on, and then
> persist in database if logged on (both for bookmarks and history). However,
> that does mean that user somehow needs to know that the bookmarks he his
> bookmarking or the history he is viewing might not get carried over.
>
> Chris
>
>
>
> On 22 March 2011 10:02, David Instone-Brewer < Technical at tyndale.cam.ac.uk>
> wrote:
>  Stupidly I hadn't thought about Bookmarks migrating from computer to
> computer!
> I think I'd like my history to migrate too - to cope with the situation of
> "I'm sure I read something yesterday about this".
> And the data is so tiny, we might as well make it endless, but only load up
> the last ten with an option for "more".
>
> Seeing as I didn't think of it, I guess the average Jo won't think of it
> either.
> It might be worth pointing this out at the signup stage:
> "Login to recall every passage you've read on any computer" - or something
> like that.
>
> David IB
>
>
> At 09:29 22/03/2011, Chris Burrell wrote:
>
> I agree that in some respects it is strange. The rationale behind having to
> log on for Bookmarks and not history is that history is something people
> expect to be able to clear from their cookies. Bookmarks I would expect to
> be able to get back to at a later date or on a different computer. If I were
> using a different PC, would I expect to see my bookmarks and/or my history?
> My feeling is that at least the bookmarks where I've intentionally said
> "bookmark this!" I'd like to see all over the place. The problem is that if
> we don't get people to log in, then we can't track their bookmarks across
> anything but a cookie which is valid for that particular session/until the
> cookies get cleared.
>
> Maybe it's a bit like a wishlist and the history on Amazon. With the
> history you kind of expect them to track it With the wishlist it's tied to
> your account a bit more.
>
> perhaps the history should be tracked server side as well. Happy to make
> changes, but thought I'd try and explain why it is so, first. (obviously the
> login prompt will come up for other features as well if they require logging
> in).
>
> Any thoughts?
> Chris
>
>
> On 21 March 2011 20:02, David Instone-Brewer <davidinstonebrewer at gmail.com>
> wrote: Yep - that works nicely. It seems strange though - you don't expect
> to log in for this. What about putting registration at Install Bibles
> instead, and reserve login for notes and other personal stuff? You often
> have to give an email address to download stuff nowadays, so it seems more
> normal.
> The blinds in the middle work really nicely.
> David IB
>
> At 18:19 21/03/2011, Chris Burrell wrote:
>
> There should be a new version of STEP on
> http://crosswire.org/~chrisburrell
> It should contain Bookmarks (well viewing them). There's some test code in
> there at the moment, to automatically create a user in a in-memory database:
>
> username/email: t at t.c password: password
> The user can't do anything, so the data is not particularly sensitive! You
> can register another user if you like (again, if i rebuild this disappears,
> and it's not encrypted or anything like that at the moment).
> Once logged in, you should be able to see two bookmarks. The history should
> now also be based on cookies, so that when you come back later, whatever
> passage you were viewing is there. The data displayed under "History" is
> stored in the cookie too and therefore persists across sessions. History is
> stored in the in-memory database and therefore is only available when you
> log in.
> NOTE: There is a noticeable gap where the user can't delete a gap (also, if
> the tomcat server gets restarted, or when i redeploy, then the data
> disappears!)
> Chris
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