Dasher in Web Technologies

Proofs of concept for Dasher zooming text entry implemented in web technologies.

• Browser.

  To run the browser proof of concept, go here: https://dasher-project.github.io/redash/browser/

• Keyboard:

  There is an Xcode project for a functional custom keyboard for iOS in the Keyboard sub-directory.

Backlog

• See about fixing the text alignment on Firefox.

• Change box colours to be set by the CSS maybe.

• Change terminology of "origin holder" to maybe "delta target".

• More use of built-in .append and .remove in piece.js module. See:

  • https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/ChildNode/remove

• More use of Piece.toggle in zoombox.js module.

• Review "element" vs "node" in variable and function names.

Notes for developers

To run the proof-of-concept under development, you might need to start an HTTP server. This is due to security restrictions on running JavaScript, and especially importing modules, from file:// URLs.

Python version 3 comes with an HTTP server that is suitable for this purpose. It could be started like this.

cd /path/where/you/cloned/redash/browser/
python3 -m http.server -b localhost

You can then run the code in the browser on your desktop, by entering http://localhost:8000 as the address.

The Android debug bridge (adb) tool has a feature by which the mobile browser can communicate with an HTTP server on the host machine. Proceed as follows.

1. Connect your Android device, which must have been set up as a developer device, via USB.

2. Run the adb command:

   adb reverse tcp:8000 tcp:8000
   

3. Enter the address http://localhost:8000 in the mobile browser.

The mobile browser will then send requests to your local HTTP server. If the browser is Chrome, and maybe anything based on a WebView, it will appear in the chrome://inspect list and the Chrome developer tools can be used.

There doesn't seem to be any way to do this with an iOS device, although it can be done on the simulator by entering the same address. An alternative may be to set up an intranet that is accessible to the mobile browser.

License

Copyright (c) 2020 The ACE Centre-North, UK registered charity 1089313. MIT licensed, see https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT.