Stellar Explorer

hatch

Hi All,

There is an old thread for the Stellar Explorer project here : https://galactictalk.org/d/422-steexp-com-ledger-explorer but I thought I'd start a new one to enter the project into the SBC.

A few things I'm thinking of adding before the end of the month:
- source the anchors list from the stellarterm directory
- add an inflation pools list / view with some basic stats
- add filter by operation type on the operations views
- add effects and offers tabs to the account view
- support a thin banner for network announcements and ads (something like the one on etherscan.io)

If people would like to see any of the above or any other ideas please let me know and I'll look at adding them to the system.

Thanks!

hatch

I've added Effects to the Account view. This is pretty useful for getting some extra details. Like seeing the amount of funds that were moved on an account merge which you can't see from the operation.

It looks like this:

screenshot

https://steexp.com/account/GAAZUE4PKMKLA7QC2MPUIUXY7BZK2WUCK7Q5EELSDLK4FE3X4DZTSCKN#effects

The last column is a link to the transaction the effect was in.

You may need to Ctrl-F5 before it appears. I found this with some cached accounts.

hatch

Also a few other changes from a couple of weeks back: https://github.com/chatch/stellarexplorer/releases:

Anchor and exchange lists are now sourced from the StellarTerm directory
Performance improvements - caching some fetches with service workers
Russian translation
a few others - see release notes

hatch

It is possible to run steexp against a private network or local development network. In fact if you build and run from source that is the default option. It will look for a local horizon at http://localhost:8000.

Instructions for using this feature are here: https://github.com/chatch/stellarexplorer#exploring-private--local-development-networks

fiatjaf

If I had found this before I would have not written the Stellar Navigator, but I'm happy I did it nonetheless.

Steexp is great, much better than everything else out there (stellarchain.io?), but I don't like the design. It's too dark, the letters are too small, everything seems too complicated.

Anyway, Steexp is still ahead of Stellar Navigator, as it supports more things, but I hope I may get on pair with it soon.

hatch

Thanks for the feedback @fiatjaf. I was wondering how people felt about the dark theme ... I might look at adding a toggle for light theme / dark theme.

I'd like to tidy the Accounts page. Too much stuff is hidden behind tabs. as for text size you can resize the page in browser I guess. It adjusts reasonably well.

I hadn't see Stellar Navigator. Elm! nice. what determines the color of the ids / tx hashs / ? is there some mapping or it's just randomised?

umbrel

hatch Since you're asking I'm not a fan of black background too.

@fiatjaf Stellar navigator is just something from another planet, I can't imagine myself using it day to day, but every time I try it's very fun to click around ?

fiatjaf

hatch Elm is a pain. So many constraints!
The colors are determined by this stupid algorithm that uses a division remainer of the sum of the characters from the transaction/operation/account id to set the hue in the HSL color space. This is in turn copied from Hashbow. I wish the generated colors were more varied. What do you think?

More unwanted feedback on Steexp:
1. The [issuer] link you append to the name of the asset should perhaps contain the initials of the issuer id, instead of [issuer]. I think that's something very important to know, as much as the asset code, or more.
2. I like the descriptions you've written for each operation, like Trust GAOI issuing JPC with limit 922337203685.4775807. That's a better way to show things than, for example, a table with key and values.

Now, how do you get that account names you show for addresses from exchanges, xlmpool etc.? In Stellar Navigator I've implemented reverse federation lookup, but I guess no one uses that.

umbrel Why do you say it's from another planet? Too colorful?
(I've reduced the number of screens that appear side by side, they were driving me mad. Perhaps I should make them adjustable?)

cedced

Best Stellar explorer for me. Especially I like to be able to see all the transactions history, not just the last few ones.

umbrel

fiatjaf For account names look here:
https://github.com/chatch/stellarexplorer/blob/master/src/data/known_accounts.js

Stellarterm has similar thing
https://github.com/irisli/stellarterm/blob/master/directory/directory.js
and even exposes it as separate npm package for everyone's use https://www.npmjs.com/package/stellarterm-directory

From another planet because it just looks different from everything I'm used to: colorful, weird page flow, where you click at the bottom first, then scroll back up to see something pop up, then click again and it goes away into the left box and something else appears in it's place ?

hatch

fiatjaf For colors I think it'd be useful if they carried some meaning. Eg. Different operation types get different colors, or groups of operation types get a color - eg. threshold low ops, med ops, high ops or something like that.

re: 1. ok that makes sense. with that you could immediately see which BTC issuer, or which CNY issuer etc. ... maybe i can use a shortened version of the display name .. i'll see how it looks.

re: the metadata yes the file umbrel posted is the main one. for the most part i'm using the stellarterm-directory data with a few adds like the exchanges list and logos and inflation pool list (See the src/data directory for all of them). Ideally parts of this data would be dynamically updated but for now they are just JSON files deployed with the app.

hey how are you doing reversed federated lookup? postgres query? i think it IS useful, so you can show a federated name on an account view even if it was fetched with the ordinary address. it's useful extra info.

OrbitLens

A few things I spotted while using steexp:

Have you thought about opening JSON and stellar.toml data in the popup window inside the app as modal dialog? Because when you click the "JSON" button in Firefox, it starts file download by default. Chrome loads JSON response in-place. At least consider adding target="_blank" to the link in order to open resource in the new tab.
The "Anchors" tab looks great by default, but the hover background makes it really hard to read.
You are using service workers for caching, a smart move in general. In this particular case, Horizon API streaming mode is a better fit for main page, because it automatically pulls updates from the Horizon server. I analyzed the Networking tab in Chrome dev tools, and it shows that you are sending a lot of requests to keep up with updates. If the tab will be open for a long time, you may hit the Horizon request rate limit (3600 per hour by default). After reaching the limit, the API will start returning 503 http errors. I personally faced the problem leaving 5 tabs of stellarterm.com and stellarchain.io open for a while.

Hope my 5 cents will help you make your cool service even better. It's a handy tool for developers, as it covers almost all API endpoints. Also, if you don't mind, I'd like to replicate the "raw JSON" feature in my project, as it can be really useful in some cases, much easier than copy-paste identifiers from one browser tab to another.

hatch

OrbitLens modals is a good idea for these. I'll change these links.

for the ANchors tab yes I see what you mean, especially the links when the grey hover background is there. i'm going to add a white theme (see few comments above) soon so I'll look at cleaning up stuff like this then.

I created an issue to use the stream mode ages ago : https://github.com/chatch/stellarexplorer/issues/7 It's about time I changed to use this! i wasn't aware about the 3600 per hour limit so def want to avoid that.

yes absolutely use the raw JSON feature. thanks for the feedback!

fritz

@hatch
Can you please fix the search box? It's not working atm when you enter a stellar public key.

hatch

@fritz
this is fixed now. thanks for letting me know.

i broke it when i added OpenSearch support (https://github.com/chatch/stellarexplorer/issues/30) over the weekend.

hatch

Summarising updates to steexp.com over the last few months:

Style

A huge thanks to stellarstyler on github who restyled the entire site! Here's a screenshot of the new styles which are live now:

New Style

Progressive Web App

Progressive Web App support has been added so you can now add the application to your home screen. There's a launcher icon, splash screen and the entire site is downloaded and saved to the device. Hit "Add to Home Screen" on first load in your mobile browser.

See the Web App manifest.json

"Add to Home Screen" will show up like this:

Add to Home Screen

Splash screen looks like this:

Splash Screen

OpenSearch

Support for OpenSearch added so you can now search from your browser search box.

OpenSearch

Backend JSON Modals

As suggested above by Orbitlens, the backend JSON will now render in a modal. Click "Copy" to copy the contents to the clipboard or click the link at the top to open the resource in a new page.

horizon.json

stellar.toml Modals

stellar.toml files also updated to display in modals.

stellar.toml

New Latest Trades View

Shows latest trades from the SDEX.

Trades

New Account Offers Tab

Shows all open offers for a given the account.

Offers

New Assets View

Show assets ordered by asset code along with details of the anchor that provides the asset.
The list is sourced from the stellarterm directory.

Trades

New Latest Payments View

System wide list of latest payments.

Payments

Home Page Streams

Now using the js-stellar-sdk stream() to update the latest Operations, Transactions and Ledgers on the home page.
This is more efficient then before where the latest n entries were being re-loaded periodically.

Header

The header menu has expanded to include the new views (see below).
The search box is now displayed on it's own line.

Header

Coming Soon

Effects Top Level View
Search by Asset Code
Search by Anchor Name
Mobile view clean up (many views are overflowing requiring scrolling)
Account Trades Tab
Horizon backend selector (eg. stellar.org, wancloud, ...)
Copy to clipboard icons next to account addresses, tx hashes, etc.

Release Summaries:

1.0.4 - New Views, Modals, Menu and Progressive Web App
1.0.3 - UI Facelift and streams
1.0.2 - OpenSearch, Tab links, Directory updates

OrbitLens

hatch OpenSearch

Support for OpenSearch added so you can now search from your browser search box.

This is very cool and handy!

fritz

Love the new styles. Noticed them a few days ago.

I use steexp a lot.

hatch

cheers fritz. that's great to hear.