GraphFi pooped out :( July 12, 2013 7:13 AM   Subscribe

It looks like some change that happened in the last few days knocked out some of GraphFi's functionality.

Which one of you amazing people made this? Can it be fixed? If it's yours and you fix it I will bake you cookies and send them to you if you live in the US. Seriously.
posted by phunniemee to Bugs at 7:13 AM (17 comments total)

Do you have SSL (secure browsing) enabled? Many browser scripts don't work when you have that turned on.
posted by pb (staff) at 7:28 AM on July 12, 2013


Ha! I do, and that was it! Thanks, pb!

Is there a way for them to work in harmony or is this just one of those sol things?
posted by phunniemee at 7:34 AM on July 12, 2013


There seems to be an SSL version of GraphFi available in the GitHub repository. So what you would do is edit the bookmark to replace the old URL "http://marks.tirl.org/src/graphfi/bm.js" with the new URL "https://raw.github.com/yourcelf/marksism/master/src/graphfi/bm.js".

That seems to partly work, in that it gets GraphFi loading at all. But it's still not displaying properly for me -- maybe something more subtle is breaking as well, or the GitHub version isn't quite the same.
posted by jhc at 7:51 AM on July 12, 2013


(Direct links to GitHub probably aren't cool as a general matter, incidentally. But it's something to play with as a temporary workaround.)
posted by jhc at 7:54 AM on July 12, 2013


Is there a way for them to work in harmony or is this just one of those sol things?

Yeah in many cases there will be a way to get the script working securely but it will probably require help from the original script author.
posted by pb (staff) at 8:06 AM on July 12, 2013


I believe the original creator was yourcelf. Announcement thread.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:11 AM on July 12, 2013


OK, I forked the GitHub repo and debugged the remaining error. Here's the pull request I sent to yourcelf. You can now (as a stopgap) get GraphFi working on SSL by replacing "http://marks.tirl.org/src/graphfi/bm.js" in the bookmarklet with "https://raw.github.com/jcushman/marksism/master/src/graphfi/bm.js".

It sounds like GitHub doesn't necessarily object to this kind of direct linking, so this might be a fine permanent solution to the https problem -- although it should probably be yourcelf's repo that people link to rather than my fork, once my change is pulled in.

Please note that installing a random Javascript I tell you about means essentially trusting me not to change the file later to misuse your Mefi account somehow. I won't do this, but it's worth understanding the risk you take when installing any bookmarklet, especially ones that load a remote file each time.

I feel a little embarrassingly over-enthusiastic about this thing now. Think of it as like my Flash Fun Friday.
posted by jhc at 8:21 AM on July 12, 2013 [8 favorites]


Hmmm.. the one downside of hotlinking https://raw.github.com... sources is that they're transfered with 'text/plain' encoding rather than 'text/javascript', which for the sloppy way most browsers handle script loading, probably isn't an issue.

I've got a couple other SSL-capable domains I could host it under and get the right transfer encoding (marks.tirl.org domain is currently on a host where adding SSL would be cumbersome). Will explore a little more.

Please note that installing a random Javascript I tell you about means essentially trusting me not to change the file later to misuse your Mefi account somehow. I won't do this, but it's worth understanding the risk you take when installing any bookmarklet, especially ones that load a remote file each time.

Yeah -- unfortunately, this particular script is hefty enough that cramming the whole kit and kaboodle into the bookmark itself isn't feasible.
posted by yourcelf at 9:10 AM on July 12, 2013


It is an issue for some browsers. There's https://rawgithub.com/.
posted by Rhomboid at 9:55 AM on July 12, 2013


Looks like there are some reports that github does some aggressive rate-limiting on requests to raw.github.com domains (in contrast to the pages.github.io domains, which don't support SSL). Not that graphfi gets tons of traffic, but.. :)

So I've moved hosting of the bookmarklet's script to an SSL capable host (https://yerk.org/graphfi/), and updated the bookmarklet target on marks.tirl.org to use the new target.

To get this change, you'll need to remove the old bookmark and grab the new one (if you've visited marks.tirl.org recently, you may also need to shift+refresh to make the change visible -- look for `yerk.org` within the source of the bookmarklet link). The old bookmarklet will continue to work just fine if you aren't using SSL.

Also fixed a couple little outstanding bugs, like the page growing too wide when the graph is displayed. Thanks phunniemee for giving me an excuse to procrastinate. OK, back to work now.
posted by yourcelf at 9:58 AM on July 12, 2013 [5 favorites]


Also fixed a couple little outstanding bugs, like the page growing too wide when the graph is displayed.

Nice -- thanks!
posted by jhc at 10:50 AM on July 12, 2013


Yaaaay! Thank you so much! This is awesome. :)

What kind of cookies do you like, yourcelf?
posted by phunniemee at 11:55 AM on July 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


Very sweet of you, thank you -- how about a compromise: let me know your general geographic region (could memail me), and maybe there's a roughly geographically collocated friend or acquaintance who would like a treat. I'd like that more than receiving cookies myself. :)
posted by yourcelf at 2:00 PM on July 12, 2013


Aw, that's so sweet! I'm in Chicago.
posted by phunniemee at 2:01 PM on July 12, 2013


I just wanted to add that whatever you did made a problem I had been experiencing for about a month go away, where the hover-on-a-bar version of a comment showed up in a very large font. Thanks for fixing that, and thanks for GraphFi, yourcelf. It's a great tool and I use it all the time.
posted by benito.strauss at 12:58 AM on July 13, 2013


Thanks yourcelf, it's one of the few MeFi addons that I have and I use it a lot.
posted by arcticseal at 6:35 AM on July 13, 2013


Thanks Greg Nog and phunniemee. I memailed you with contact info for some local-ish folks you could send sweets to if inclined. :)
posted by yourcelf at 7:16 AM on July 13, 2013 [1 favorite]


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