Milkshake/jQuery.IME extensions for Firefox and Chrome/Project Updates

jQuery.IME extensions for Firefox and Chrome − Project updates
This page briefly describes the progress that I have made regarding my GSoC 2013 project − jQuery.IME extensions for Firefox and Chrome

Source Code
Source code is availabe on github
 * Chrome extension: https://github.com/pravee-n/jquery.ime-chrome-extension
 * Firefox extension: https://github.com/pravee-n/jquery.ime-firefox-extension

Until June 17 (Community Bonding Period)

 * Familiarized myself with the jquery.ime coding style and structure
 * Setup my development environment and read the relevant documentation of the jquery.ime library
 * Studied Chrome and Firefox extension architecture and workflow
 * Discussed my approach towards the project with Santhosh
 * I would start off by making working versions of both Chrome and Firefox extensions
 * Afterwards I would work on developing the on-screen keyboard feature
 * Would work towards making jquery.ime work on contenteditable divs
 * verified the checklist at Summer_of_Code_2013

June 24th
Progress made since last meeting:
 * moved the prototype extensions to separate github repositories
 * Until now I was working on both the extensions in a single github repository: https://github.com/pravee-n/jquery.ime-extensions. I decided it would be better to maintain different repositories for each extensions so that anyone can easily track progress, fork or contribute to each extension individually.
 * Chrome extensions is now available at https://github.com/pravee-n/jquery.ime-chrome-extension.
 * Firefox extension is now available at https://github.com/pravee-n/jquery.ime-firefox-extension.
 * Synchronize the extensions with the upstream project
 * We need to synchronize the extensions with the upstream project at regular intervals. I discussed a few possible approaches with Santhosh and we decided to use Git Submodules. The jquery.ime and jquery.uls projects are now included as submodules in the extensions' repositories and can be easily synchronized with their upstream projects respectively.

Goals till next meeting:
 * Integrate jquery.uls in Chrome extension
 * Currently a user has to scroll through all the languages in order to select a particular language. Integrating jQuery.uls would allow language selection based on regions.

July 1st
Progress made since last meeting:
 * Integrated Universal Language Selector (jQuery.ULS) in Chrome extension
 * I successfully integrated the Universal Language Selector in Chrome extension. Now, rather than scrolling all the way down to select a language, the user can easily select a particular language using Universal language Selector.
 * A user's last six languages and their respective input methods are now stored in browser's local storage. Replicating jQuery.ime's behavior on mediawiki, jQuery.ime chrome extension is initialized by these six languages only and any other language can be selected using the Universal Language Selector.

Issues faced:
 * The CSS of jquery.uls consists of very generic class names and IDs such as search, row etc. The extension injects this CSS into the webpage which might result in conflict in css and produce some erroneous results. For example the jquery.uls contains a search bar whose ID is search. I tested the extension on a google search page. While doing a google search, google appends the search results into a #search element. Rather than injecting into its own #search element it appends the results into jquery.uls's search bar which is also having the same ID. There might be some issues on other webpages as well due to these very generic class names and IDs.
 * In order to initialize the ime with only a subset of languages, we need to pass the subset as options to the ime. Now when a user selects a new language, it should be saved as user's last used language in local storage. However there is a conditional check in jquery.ime's code that calls the save preferences method only when the currently selected language is present in ime's list of languages. As a result, user's last used languages are not saved in local storage. I have temporarily commented out that particular condition.

Goals till next meeting:
 * Fix all bugs and issues faced while integrating jquery.uls in Chrome extension.
 * Replicate the same functionality in Firefox extension.

July 8th
Progress made since last meeting:
 * The bug regarding preferences not being saved when jquery.ime is initialized with a subset of languages was resolved and merged in upstream this week by the Language Engineering team. So I simply synchronized my extensions with the upstream projects to get rid of that bug.
 * Replicated Universal Language Selector integration in Firefox extension.
 * Currently working on a pull request that would add ime- and uls- prefixes to all class names and IDs so as to avoid having very generic class names.

Goals till next meeting:
 * Create a pull request fixing generic class names and IDs in both jquery.ime and jquery.uls upstream repositories.
 * Test the extensions made so far on a few more websites and identity some possible bugs/issues.

July 15th
Progress made in the last week
 * To solve the problem associated with generic classes and IDs, I prefixed ime- and uls- to all classes and IDs in jquery.ime and jquery.uls respectively and opened pull requests in respective repositories.
 * jquery.ime pull request - https://github.com/wikimedia/jquery.ime/pull/208.
 * jquery.uls pull request - https://github.com/wikimedia/jquery.uls/pull/105.
 * Changes in jquery.ime were reviewed and merged successfully. Waiting for the changes in jquery.uls to get reviewed and merged.

July 22th
I discussed the project progress made so far with Santhosh and Amir. The meeting included demo of the project so far, code review and planning for future steps.

Goals till Midterm evaluation (29th July - 2nd August)
 * Try to store the IME preferences in extension preference area instead of site specific localstorage.
 * Remove Chrome and Firefox specific code from jquery.ime and jquery.uls submodules. We need to overload such specific methods and leave the upstream projects unaltered.
 * Implement helpHandler for IME the same way it is implemented on MediaWiki.
 * Update submodules from upstream.
 * Write a blog post explaining all the progress made so far including screenshots of jquery.ime extension in action on a few sites.

July 29th
Progress made in the last week
 * Implemented extension specific local storage.
 * Until now ime preferences were stored in website specific local storage that means we were saving different preferences for google.com, facebook.com and so on. Now preferences are stored in extension's storage area which means it would be common across all websites.
 * Removed Chrome and Firefox specific code from submodules.
 * There was some Chrome specific and some Firefox specific code that was needed in ime's load method. I overloaded that method to move the Chrome and Firefox specific code out of the submodules and leave them unaltered.
 * Implemented helpHandler for IME that adds a help link for the selected input method.

Goals till next meeting
 * Write a blog post explaining all the progress made so far including screenshots of jquery.ime extension in action on a few sites.
 * Launch beta version of both Chrome and Firefox extensions on the Chrome Web Store and Mozilla Addons repository respectively.