Newsit

To be honest, I haven't touched the code or checked on the project in 12 months, it's just been chugging along doing what it was designed to do... help people find Hacker News discussions.

This project was a test to see if I could make a product that people could use without any management from me.... basically a low maintenance business (without the profitability).

Even though I haven't made a single cent from this project, it's got 5 stars on both the Chrome and Firefox Store's with 120 combined active users.... which is something right?!

This proves to myself that I can make something people like and want to use. Now I think it's time to make something profitable ;)

In developing Newsit, I wanted to frequently publish to the chrome store. The problem was that the Google Chrome Store did not provide a place to upload the source code (like Firefox does). This meant I could only give them the compiled bundle file that Webpack produces, this lead to huge delays in deployment.

The bundle.js file is basically a file containing the entire application. At first glance you can spot many advantages of this, including:

• Bundled dependencies
• Reduces number of files required
• Obfuscates the logic of the application (secret algorithms!)
• Simplifies deployment
• Use other languages, not compatible with the browser
• Can improve performance and compatibility

I learnt that Google Chrome Store strictly validates each deployment. They basically compare the new version to the previous version of the application and approve it if the changes are acceptable. After waiting over 24 hours on average for deployments to be live in the store, I went through the disadvantages of bundling:

• Comparatively huge amount of code compared to non-bundled source code
• Dependencies are not explicit in the bundle (all mashed together)
• Changing a single line in the source code, could have an unpredictable effect on the bundle file.

So I came to the conclusion that moving away from Webpack would have a positive effect on; file size, readability and explicit dependencies of the application. This in turn allowed my extension to be reviewed in less than 1 hour compared to the 24 hour wait earlier.

I developed this browser extension for myself, however I wanted it to be useful to many others, so I released it to "Show HN:" and received some very useful feedback related to the concerns of privacy.

Users initially assumed that the extension would be calling a private server which I controlled and could store every url that was processed. However I explained that no requests were made to any server I controlled, only sent to the public API's of Reddit and Hacker News.

This is a nice demonstration that by getting user feedback early on in development can be immensely helpful in the future. As customers would be more likely to use the tool.

So the idea of Newsit is to be a browser plugin to help you find the discussions around webpages that you're viewing. The question was which platform to develop for. Since I'm an avid Chrome user, I decided to develop the extension for the Chrome Store.

The Chrome Team have a great ecosystem of extensions, however it's not easy to break into. My extension was removed twice for having "Misleading information" in the description. After emailing the support team, they Added the extension back to the store. Deployment on the Chrome store is also a pain, as it can take up to 24 hours for an extension revision to be reviewed and approved. This is due to obfuscation of code.

After dealing with this and several requests for a Firefox port I decided to check out the Firfox Addon store. To my suprise, the addon API for firefox was very similar to chrome and porting was easy. Firefox also have a detailed deployment form, which allows you to include the source code and special "reviewer notes". This makes deployment much faster and painless on the Firefox Store.

Overall, Firefox turned out to be a better platform for deploying and testing Newsit, however the Chrome Store has had a greater reach, probably due to the wider adoption of Chrome over Firefox.

While browsing the internet, I always wonder how reliable the information is that I'm looking at. Places like Reddit allow many perspectives to be shared, with the most objectively popular rising to the top.

For example, if you find an article claiming to have found a cure for cancer, go to the Reddit discussion to which opinions are dominant, which should give you a good indication on how reliable the article is.

Although looking at discussions is not the best way to base your opinion on something. It's better than taking an article/website at face value.

This how I got the idea for Newsit. It's a browser extension, which allows you to instantly find the Reddit or Hacker News discussions of the page you're looking at!