
Show HN: Tab Sharing Without Screencasting - jessegee
Hi HN,<p>I&#x27;ve developed a Chrome extension that provides tab-sharing functionality without the use of screencasting.<p>The product works by keeping the DOM on a mirrored page in sync with the driver&#x27;s display. This is achieved by listening for DOM events on the driver&#x27;s page and relaying them to the mirror as display instructions (e.g. add&#x2F;remove a node, change attribute, scroll page, etc.). While the mirrored page gets the DOM structure directly from their peer via a WebRTC connection, the bulk of the resources and visible content (e.g. images, fonts, stylesheets, etc.) are downloaded directly from the site being browsed.<p>There are two significant advantages of this technology:
  1) Because each peer is rendering the same DOM with all images downloaded from the same source, they see identical, full-resolution displays of the same web page. In contrast, screencasting over limited bandwidth connections often appears as jerky, low-resolution representations.
  2) As the peer-to-peer messages sent to maintain page sync tend to be small, the application does not require significant upload bandwidth and can be more performant for users with slower internet connections.<p>To check it out, you will need to create an account, link up with another user, and install the extension. Instructions for doing this can be found at https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.helpoutmom.com&#x2F;<p>I hope you give it a try and I&#x27;d be eager to hear any thoughts, suggestions, or requests!
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cjbprime
Oh, I just noticed the domain name -- for what it's worth, I think you should
try to find a different one: by inserting a gender (woman) and age (not young)
into a neutral thing (helping someone else with a computer), you're
encouraging a stereotype that already exists of women and not-young people as
not understanding technology.

If you don't agree that the domain name does this, consider how ridiculous it
would sound for it to be "helpoutdad.com". Help out Dad? With what? It only
works as a slogan if it's able to latch on to the sexist stereotype.

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jessegee
That's a solid point. When I picked the name, I was thinking about the use
case that inspired me to create the product. I didn't consider how I was
playing into a stereotype.

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cjbprime
Kudos for avoiding a defensive response, it's a hard thing to do :)

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cjbprime
That's a neat idea! But it seems risky from a security perspective. Can the
other party make me submit a form with their chosen input? Why is that a good
idea?

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jessegee
Good question. First off, the idea is you would only do this with people you
trust. To connect and tab share with someone, you would need to send and/or
accept an email invitation. It’s not an IT product. It’s intended for friends
and family.

The mirrored page has a full copy of the DOM. So yes, if that includes input
fields with sensitive information, the mirrored user could see that in Dev
tools. But there is no easy way them to submit a form. Pointer events are
disabled on the mirror and the Javascript of the original page is not loaded.

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cjbprime
Nice! I'm glad it's read-only.

