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Glavin001 / atom-preview

:construction: (NO LONGER MAINTAINED) :construction: - :eyeglasses: Ultimate previewer of source code in Atom.
https://atom.io/packages/preview
MIT License
51 stars 23 forks source link

More details on how Atom Preview tracks Analytics #76

Open alkama opened 10 years ago

alkama commented 10 years ago

First, I tried to preview a coffee-script file and the preview panel took a really long time to load (showing a spinning wheel). This delay is the same each time I close the preview and toggle it open again later.

This really looked like a symptom of a program waiting for a networked interaction (since I'm behind a pretty horrible proxy).

I didn't knew or understood the module was was actually sending files to a web service to be "processed" and/or was phoning home. I thought it would be a local conversion.

Havent checked if it actually does send files to the net, but I already see a problem in that it includes some forced analytics tracking...

You could probably make a note about what the plugin does "web wise". It would be fair to alert users about what you track and how you track it ;(

This sadly shows what Atom.io, being built using browsers stack, could lead to and ease...

Glavin001 commented 10 years ago

I didn't knew or understood the module was was actually sending files to a web service to be "processed" and/or was phoning home. I thought it would be a local conversion.

It is local conversion, no network connection required. See https://github.com/Glavin001/atom-preview/blob/master/lib/renderer.coffee

Havent checked if it actually does send files to the net, but I already see a problem in that it includes some forced analytics tracking...

I use the Analytics to track what languages are most popular and where I should focus development, since I do not have nearly enough time to solve all problems / add support for languages. Now I can see what is being most used and what is missing. See https://github.com/Glavin001/atom-preview/blob/master/lib/preview-view.coffee#L236-L289

You could probably make a note about what the plugin does "web wise". It would be fair to alert users about what you track and how you track it ;(

Good idea. I should add

Hope this helps.

alkama commented 10 years ago

It does, thanks a lot for your clarifications!

It's always better to be explicit about those behaviours :) They can be perfectly legit (it does indeed makes sense for you to have those stats to keep on perfecting the module where it more matters). But from end user's perspective, random tracking motives are unclear until stated (and pretty rude too when uninvited).

Glad to see you turned it to a possible improvement ! Regards.

mtandersson commented 9 years ago

Thanks for an awesome extension!

As an end user I don't want to be tracked, I really would like to continue to use your nice extension with the option to disable tracking. Can you please add that feature soon. Thanks!

rugk commented 9 years ago

That's still not implemented? :cry:

Glavin001 commented 9 years ago

I would be more than happy to review and merge a Pull Request for this.