SafeSpace

A chrome extension which checks websites for triggers and gives you appropriate warnings.

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Inspiration

While the internet is a very powerful to that can be used to make connections, develop projects, or keep up to date on the latest celebrity, there is also the potential for hate. In light of this, our team decided to take on the challenge proposed by the #hackharassement to develop a cross-platform solution to online harassment by implementing a chrome extension. This chrome extension allows for users to create a safe environment for themselves as they navigate from page to page.

What it does

SafeSpace allows users to input trigger words through the extension popup window. The extension will scans a webpage looking for instances of the trigger words. If any of the words are found, a pop up will be displayed that blocks the content of the page before it is loaded, to notify the user. If the user does not want to see the page they can go back, otherwise they can view the webpage were instances of the words are replaced by "*****".

How we built it

We first started by researching more about creating a Google Chrome extension. Once we figured that out, we first started off with only the extension popup HTML and JS files and slowly starting implementing functionality. We split up the work between the team by back-end and front-end development. Regularly, we committed to the master github branch to ensure everyone's implementations were working correctly with each other.

Challenges we ran into

chrome.storage fullstop. While we thought storing and accessing our data should have been relatively easy, it proved to be very challenging.

Implementing functionality of the modal window that pops up once a trigger work is detected has not been yet resolved as to implement the modal window, we had to inject HTML into JS.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The back-end and front-end work separately and achieve the functionality we aimed for at the beginning of the Hack Day. Integrating them is yet to be completed, however, we hope to have that completed as we consider our extension to be extremely applicable nowadays.

What we learned

How to create a Google Chrome extension and use the powerful functionality of integrating HTML and JS.

What's next for safespace

We plan to integrate the back-end and front-end parts together to achieve overall functionality. Once this is complete, we hope to release it as a Google Chrome extension that can be downloaded by anyone.

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