zeitgeist team mailing list archive

[Robbie Eginton <1406636@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Public bug reported:

When I go here: 
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/zeitgeist-plugin/cckhkmhbknngejnoepfopckjlbnpookg

to install the Chromium plugin for Zeitgeist, after confirming the
installation/permissions, a yellow info bar says "NPAPI plugins are not
supported."

No history from my Chromium use seems to be logged in the Activity
Journal.

I use Chromium as my primary web browser -- my version info (major
version 39):

Chromium:	39.0.2171.65 (Developer Build) Built on Ubuntu 14.04, running on LinuxMint 17.1
Revision:	b853bfefba0da840f4574eb3b5c7ad6e9b8573b5
OS:	Linux 
Blink:	537.36 (@185325)
JavaScript:	V8 3.29.88.17
Flash:	16.0.0.235
User Agent:	Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Ubuntu Chromium/39.0.2171.65 Chrome/39.0.2171.65 Safari/537.36

REASON:

See here: http://www.chromium.org/developers/npapi-deprecation

chrome://flags doesn't seem to have the Enable NPAPI flag anymore; the
api seems to be not only deprecated but, in recent versions, well and
truly gone.

SUGGESTED FIX:

This is what the Chromium devs suggest for a replacement for communication with native apps: 
https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/nativeMessaging

Replacing the data-source would probably entail building a browser
extension to watch activity, and then building a zeitgeist sub-process
of some sort that can communicate over JSON w/ the extension. It will
also be necessary to put a file describing how to start the "host" (i.e.
native, zeitgeist-side) process in a Chrome/ium subdirectory.

Other alternatives (probably not relevant) are described here: 
http://www.chromium.org/developers/npapi-deprecation#TOC-Alternatives-to-NPAPI

IMPACT:

For me, and I think for many users, the vast majority of my computing is
on the internet. There are many days when I don't open a single desktop
application besides Chromium. While I can still get benefit out of
Zeitgeist by using Synapse, it won't be possible/worthwhile to form the
habit of accessing the desktop primarily through the Activity Journal or
suchlike until Chrome/ium is supported. Also, it feels like a huge hole
in Synapse for it to ignore my web usage -- especially when it *doesn't*
ignore the few pages I've visited in Firefox. So, for my use case, this
bug is moderately severe.

I'm willing to do some work in making this happen; I have general
programming experience, although I haven't any experience with Chrome
Extensions or any of the relevant languages except JS and Python, and
I'm not sure I feel confident taking on this whole project by myself
because I've never successfully built an app or plugin of any size on my
own, and only once in a group. Get in touch and tell me what you need
done!

Thank you.  
-- Robbie Eginton

** Affects: zeitgeist-datasources
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Zeitgeist
Framework Team, which is subscribed to Zeitgeist Data-Sources.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1406636

Title:
  chrome/ium data-source plugin uses no-longer-supported api (NPAPI)

Status in Zeitgeist Data-Sources:
  New

Bug description:
  When I go here: 
  https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/zeitgeist-plugin/cckhkmhbknngejnoepfopckjlbnpookg

  to install the Chromium plugin for Zeitgeist, after confirming the
  installation/permissions, a yellow info bar says "NPAPI plugins are
  not supported."

  No history from my Chromium use seems to be logged in the Activity
  Journal.

  I use Chromium as my primary web browser -- my version info (major
  version 39):

  Chromium:	39.0.2171.65 (Developer Build) Built on Ubuntu 14.04, running on LinuxMint 17.1
  Revision:	b853bfefba0da840f4574eb3b5c7ad6e9b8573b5
  OS:	Linux 
  Blink:	537.36 (@185325)
  JavaScript:	V8 3.29.88.17
  Flash:	16.0.0.235
  User Agent:	Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Ubuntu Chromium/39.0.2171.65 Chrome/39.0.2171.65 Safari/537.36

  REASON:

  See here: http://www.chromium.org/developers/npapi-deprecation

  chrome://flags doesn't seem to have the Enable NPAPI flag anymore; the
  api seems to be not only deprecated but, in recent versions, well and
  truly gone.

  SUGGESTED FIX:

  This is what the Chromium devs suggest for a replacement for communication with native apps: 
  https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/nativeMessaging

  Replacing the data-source would probably entail building a browser
  extension to watch activity, and then building a zeitgeist sub-process
  of some sort that can communicate over JSON w/ the extension. It will
  also be necessary to put a file describing how to start the "host"
  (i.e. native, zeitgeist-side) process in a Chrome/ium subdirectory.

  Other alternatives (probably not relevant) are described here: 
  http://www.chromium.org/developers/npapi-deprecation#TOC-Alternatives-to-NPAPI

  IMPACT:

  For me, and I think for many users, the vast majority of my computing
  is on the internet. There are many days when I don't open a single
  desktop application besides Chromium. While I can still get benefit
  out of Zeitgeist by using Synapse, it won't be possible/worthwhile to
  form the habit of accessing the desktop primarily through the Activity
  Journal or suchlike until Chrome/ium is supported. Also, it feels like
  a huge hole in Synapse for it to ignore my web usage -- especially
  when it *doesn't* ignore the few pages I've visited in Firefox. So,
  for my use case, this bug is moderately severe.

  I'm willing to do some work in making this happen; I have general
  programming experience, although I haven't any experience with Chrome
  Extensions or any of the relevant languages except JS and Python, and
  I'm not sure I feel confident taking on this whole project by myself
  because I've never successfully built an app or plugin of any size on
  my own, and only once in a group. Get in touch and tell me what you
  need done!

  Thank you.  
  -- Robbie Eginton

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