Linking back to the source of a binder

via https://twitter.com/podehaye/status/1045071251667079169

We should consider displaying a (prominent) link back to the source of a live binder instance.

I think it is pretty hard to tell the difference between https://mybinder.org/v2/gl/betatim/not-evil-at-all?urlpath=something/here/now.ipynb and https://mybinder.org/v2/gh/betatim/not-evil-at-all?urlpath=something/here/now.ipynb

Another use case is people following a launch link and then ending up in a binder and now wondering “so where is the github repo for this?”

These two cases together make me think that we should figure out a way to display a banner or something like that at the top of all pages served by a BinderHub. One way would be to modify the notebook server templates via the appendix. With that we could cover lab and notebook but RStudio would be harder to do. Could the nbrserverproxy inject some HTML (@ryanlovett) to add a banner?

Related #579

[betatim]

Rebooting this issue. It would be great to upstream the “share this link to start your own instance of this” button from GESIS to BinderHub. As a v1 I’d go with the button as-is from GESIS. Then we refine/improve/expand scope.

A separate PR that does this for classic notebook and one that does this for lab would be Ok with me. It allows us to work on them independently.

@bitnik do you want to attempt this?

[betatim]

@ian-r-rose re: appendix - maybe we start with a PR from @bitnik for the notebook UI which will demonstrate the appendix feature.

In short, binderhub adds a little extra to every build after the user has had their say to make some final tweaks which are needed for running on a binderhub but not needed if you are launching it with repo2docker at home. Also the appendix works even when people have a custom Dockerfile.

I like the idea of placing it in the top right of the menubar to try and place it in approximately the same location in both lab and notebook. IMHO the main purpose of this is to make it very easy to find and understand for those who aren’t Jupyter/Binder regulars. So we should aim for the most “in your face” solution that isn’t totally horrible. Experienced people already know how to find all the info they are after (I think).