Bugzilla

I noticed that the STR for Bug 1555860 involved setting two prefs to point the browser at FxA staging environment:

> To be able to see the about:welcome page on a version where this is not implemented
> please go to about:config and set:
> identity.fxaccounts.autoconfig.uri to https://accounts.stage.mozaws.net
> browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.fxaccounts.endpoint to https://accounts.stage.mozaws.net

At first glance, it seems unlikely to me that we'd ever want newtab using a different accounts server than the rest of Firefox, but of course I could be missing something - I see in Bug 1471514 Comment 11 that this was deliberately made its own pref rather than re-using an existing one.

It feels like we should do *something* to prevent newtab using a different account service to the rest of the browser. Options could include:

* Add helper functions in FxA to generate the various URLs that the newtab page needs, rather than requiring it to construct its own URLs.
* Have the newtab page use an existing FxA pref to determine the right server root, such as `identity.fxaccounts.remote.root`.
* Have FxA's autoconfig logic set the pref used by newtab.

I listed them in my own naive order of preference, but I don't have much context on why the current code works the way it does, so my preferences could easily be wrong.  :Mardak, :stomlinson, what do you think?

I noticed that the STR for Bug 1555860 involved setting two prefs to point the browser at FxA staging environment:

> To be able to see the about:welcome page on a version where this is not implemented
> please go to about:config and set:
> identity.fxaccounts.autoconfig.uri to https://accounts.stage.mozaws.net
> browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.fxaccounts.endpoint to https://accounts.stage.mozaws.net

At first glance, it seems unlikely to me that we'd ever want newtab using a different accounts server than the rest of Firefox, and that setting the autoconfig URI should just make newtab do the right thing. But of course I could be missing something - I see in Bug 1471514 Comment 11 that this was deliberately made its own pref rather than re-using an existing one.

It feels like we should do *something* to prevent newtab using a different account service to the rest of the browser. Options could include:

* Add helper functions in FxA to generate the various URLs that the newtab page needs, rather than requiring it to construct its own URLs.
* Have the newtab page use an existing FxA pref to determine the right server root, such as `identity.fxaccounts.remote.root`.
* Have FxA's autoconfig logic set the pref used by newtab.

I listed them in my own naive order of preference, but I don't have much context on why the current code works the way it does, so my preferences could easily be wrong.  :Mardak, :stomlinson, what do you think?