For the context, I am working on my GSoC project that is to make a browser-extension to search CC Licensed content in the public domain by interacting with CC Catalog API.

Previous Blogs:

• CC Browser Extension - A GSoC Project
• CC Browser Extension Week 5, 6

Work Done

A couple of major features were added to the browser extension these weeks like image Info and attribution preview and options UI. Also, the extension now has dark mode :)

Now, when the user clicks on the image thumbnail, a popup with image information (like title, creator link, license, and provider links), attribution (both rich text and HTML version) and social media share links opens.

We also tried to figure out a way to let users download the images and attribute the creator with the least possible clicks. Right now there are two user-flows:

1. If the users need only one image, they can press the Download Image button and copy the desired attribution to the clipboard.
2. If they need to download multiple images in a single session, they can press Download Image and Attribution. This will download both versions (rich text and HTML) of attribution in a text file of the same name as the image file.

These workflows work perfectly on chrome. Whereas, Firefox prompts the user to confirm the download with a popup (if they have not already set a default option) and this results in termination of the browser-extension session. So, the purpose of the second workflow of letting the user continue the session while also downloading the images fails here. I also had a discussion about this with the mentors and we brainstormed some possible solutions. I have written about a possible solution in the 'Coming Up' section below.

I also added an options page to the extension which will open in a new tab and the user can set default filters here. So, now they don't have to apply the filters that they often use again and again for every session.

Coming Up

• Add a bookmark feature. A lot of the users may want to save multiple images for later to check out. I think this might also provide a better solution to the problem discussed above.
• Test and fix bugs.
• Improve documentation.

You can check out the project on Github and join the discussion on #gsoc-browser-ext channel on slack.

Special Thanks: Alden, Timid and Kriti