Adding branding/wrapper to launched binders

[betatim]

Should we change the behaviour when redirecting a user to their launched binder so that they always see some content provided by the binderhub host. This would include some branding, useful links/buttons, information about how many copies of this repo are running, etc.

A first pass solution would be to have an iframe where the top of the page contains the binderhub banner and bottom part of the page shows what ever the binder's webserver shows. This means the URL shown in the location field of the browser remains something like https://mybinder.org/v2/gh/betatim/openrefineder/master which is "the right URL" to share (currently people share the wrong one once in a while).

Some context: jupyterhub/jupyter-server-proxy#36

[choldgraf]

hmm, maybe with a flag in the URL or something like this? e.g."admin=True"?

[betatim]

What do you mean with admin=True? I am somehow missing some context.

[choldgraf]

I just meant that whatever information we present to users in the frame, it could be useful if this information could be controlled somehow. I think we shouldn't discuss that point in this issue though because your original point is important enough to discuss on its own. Sorry about the noise!

[yuvipanda]

Thank you for opening this issue, @betatim! I think it's an important setup for us to think about!

I have strong negative feelings around using frames / iframes for this purpose. They screw with the URL bar, and a lot of people have iframe busting plugins / tools installed (including myself). This was a trend in the late 2000s, and it generally did not survive. Here's a quote from Digg when they killed theirs (they were also one of the first to start it):

Framing content with an iFrame is bad for the Internet. It causes confusion when bookmarking, breaks w/iFrame busters, and has no ability to communicate with the lower frame (if you browse away from a story, the old digg count still persists). It’s an inconsistent/wonky user experience, and I’m happy to say we are killing it when we launch the new Digg (sign up for the beta here).

https://techcrunch.com/2010/04/06/diggs-kevin-rose-diggbar-is-bad-for-the-internet-so-were-killing-it/

My personal favorite is to add Jupyter Notebook / Lab extensions and get them into the build automatically...

[betatim]

The trade-off I see is between something that works for any kind of frontend (iframes) and something that keeps the URL and back buttons working (nbextensions/customisations via the appendix).

Originally I preferred the trade-off to something that works for all frontends but I think now I am Ok with RStudio not having anything. There don't seem to be that many people using it.

Will we have to write two sets of extensions: one for notebook and one for jupyterlab?

[ellisonbg]

I am not fond of an iframe approach. Doing a Lab/notebook extension with similar design would be fine with me.