NeOff

Your favorite website is one click away with NeOff extension! 🌐✨

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Inspiration

The theme for VandyHack 2023 is "Neon." This theme inspired us to brainstorm ideas related to Neon. We initially thought about topics associated with night time and relaxation, and this led us to explore ways to unwind during our free time. As a result, we came up with the name "NeOff."

To create something accessible to a wide audience and recognizing that many people spend their leisure time on the internet, we decided to develop a web extension. This extension is designed to help users discover entertaining websites to pass the time and relax.

To align with the Neon theme, we designed the user interface to feature a neon light effect. The UI incorporates a dark background and vibrant colors, with CSS techniques that emulate light flickering and glowing. This design captures the essence of neon lights, creating a visually captivating and immersive experience for users.

What it does

NeOff is a Chrome extension designed to facilitate the promotion and exploration of websites. When users bookmark a webpage, they receive a push notification, encouraging them to contribute this site to NeOff's dataset, provided they're inclined to share. Beyond sharing, within the extension's popup, users can browse top-rated sites or explore a random feed. When navigating to a NeOff-recommended site, users are prompted to offer feedback on the recommendation. This feedback then informs and refines future suggestions.

How we built it

  • Front end: React, JavaScript;
  • Back end: Firebase
  • Version control: Git

Challenges we ran into

  • Store the visited website in the same session to avoid repeated notification
  • Send feedback notifications if the user navigates to the website based on the recommendation
  • Had some misunderstanding on deploying Firebase

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Despite lacking prior experience in Chrome extension development and having limited exposure to web development before this Hackathon, we successfully launched NeOff version 1.0.0, achieving all the functionality we envisioned. Plus, we're particularly proud of the slick user interface, which boasts a vibrant neon effect!

What we learned

Although both fall under the React umbrella, Chrome extension development has its nuances compared to standard web development. Specific APIs are tailored for the context of extension development. Furthermore, we gained insights into deploying Firebase for data storage.

What's next for NeOff

  • Analyze user behavior to refine our website collection and feedback mechanisms, making the tool even more user-centric
  • Revamp the notification page to be more visually appealing and user-friendly, drawing from the native notification systems of both macOS and Windows
  • Introduce a "trending topic" version of website recommendations by featuring "top-rated of the day" sites.
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