the first of several merge requests to leverage the VM blob URLs

[johnmcswain]

@brollb Creating this MR to get the easiest stuff reviewed and to assert the other changes, primarily in the client.js file. Also, any preferred coding conventions or linting.

[brollb]

Hi @johnmcswain, why did you close this? (It took me a while to find it bc I kept looking at the PRs list and not seeing it :) )