Open-with-binder browser extension

Meta
,
1

The open-with-binder Firefox browser extension has just been updated (almost exactly a year after its last update)!

You can now use it to open repositories directly from GitLab.com as well as Gists. GitHub repos also still work :joy:

Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/open-with-binder/
Chrome (not updated yet): https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/open-with-binder/napgohblobncpnagnehjpooinnimhpkc

3 Likes
2

@betatim super cool! I wonder where is the best place for us to advertise this kinda tool long-term. somewhere on mybinder.org?

1 Like
3

Maybe we can make an entry in the FAQ of docs.mybinder.org? (As well as moving it up from the “advanced topics” section :-/)

4

Alternatively, as more Binder tools get built for “connecting people with sharable, interactive, reproducible environments in the cloud”, at what point is it worth grabbing a website like “binderproject.org” for a more high-level “what is the binder project and what does it do?” place as opposed to documentation for a specific tool?

5

We should definitely do that (grab a domain for Project Binder).

I think open-with-binder fits well into the mybinder.org documentation because right now mybinder.org is the only place it will open stuff on. (That could change in the future or become configurable but right now that is all it can do)

6

Do we need a new domain, or can project.mybinder.org be enough?

1 Like
7

:+1: hadn’t thought of that. Only potential downside is that mybinder.org (the service) and binder the project become more associated with each other. Not sure if that is a negative, just something to ponder.

8

that’s a good point - maybe this is one way to think about it: if mybinder.org (the service) ever shuts down, does that necessarily mean that “The Binder Project” is now also shut down? If so, then project.mybinder.org is probably fine. If not, then perhaps worth separating the two.

9

We can always redirect or keep the domain even if mybinder.org the service shuts down. I’d want to host a page informing people about that on the root domain anyway for a while to come.

Should we go ahead and set that up starting with a github repo + jekyll + netlify combination?

10

That sounds good to me.

Let’s start with project.mybinder.org to avoid having to deal with another domain registration. We can always change and add redirects in the future, but I like not adding new things to manage.

An analogy I like to use: Python.org provides links and resources for CPython, which is technically the reference implementation of Python, not the only implementation of the language. If CPython development stopped and the world switched to PyPy, Python.org wouldn’t go away. I’d mostly treat the mybinder.org service the same way: it’s the reference implementation and can reasonably live on the official project domain. Even if we can’t run the reference service anymore some time in the future, the project domain can stay the same.

2 Likes