934030 - [meta] Top Sites query improvements

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: Awesomescreen, defect)

Description

[Richard Newman [:rnewman]]

* Clean profile.
* Add http://www.amazon.com as a bookmark.
* Tap it in Top Sites.
* Return to about:home.
* Observe how there's a favicon-only bookmark for Amazon, and a top site named Amazon with a thumbnail.

We should be aware of redirects and URL changes, and not regard these things as different Top Sites.

Right now we have a pretty crummy experience when your desktop sites get synced to your phone -- those top sites end up with no thumbnail, and perhaps not even a favicon, because they're not the site that actually ends up being tracked.

This will probably involve improvements to our data representation.

Comment 1

[Richard Newman [:rnewman]]

Even more exciting:

http://i.imgur.com/kVXH1jE.png

Comment 2

[Richard Newman [:rnewman]]

The solution Places uses is to mark some pages in history as hidden: 

1111   /**
1112    * Some pages in history are marked "hidden" and thus don't appear by default
1113    * in queries.  These include automatic framed visits and redirects.  Setting
1114    * this attribute will return all pages, even hidden ones.  Does nothing for
1115    * bookmark queries. Defaults to false.
1116    */
1117   attribute boolean includeHidden;

We definitely need that capability to handle JS redirection (though we'd need to be judicious about its application).

We can perhaps hackily handle network redirection in the same way, but really a redirect is a property of a visit, not a page. That means a schema change.

mfinkle, care to prioritize?

Comment 3

[Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) (use needinfo?)]

We could use the "hidden" feature as a way to exclude sensitive websites from the thumbnails on top-sites too.

This seems like a useful project for reducing the "cruft" from the awesomescreen results too.

What approaches are we considering? What is the scope of the project? Milestones?

I would like to see this move forward.

Comment 4

[Richard Newman [:rnewman]]

(In reply to Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) from comment #3)
> We could use the "hidden" feature as a way to exclude sensitive websites
> from the thumbnails on top-sites too.
> 
> This seems like a useful project for reducing the "cruft" from the
> awesomescreen results too.
> 
> What approaches are we considering? What is the scope of the project?
> Milestones?

There are two distinct bits to this.

One is eliminating straight-up redirects: Comment 1. That we can do by observing automatic page redirects, hiding those interstitial pages. This requires a small schema change -- either hiding history entries altogether, or merging in Sync's notion of visits and moving us closer to Places' schema.

The other is Comment 0: allowing Fennec to recognize that m.foo.com and www.foo.com, with a redirect (or "Request desktop version") between them, represent a "site", and that we should:

  1. Merge the mobile and desktop sites together for the purposes of computing frecency, if we've visited the mobile version at all.
  2. Use the mobile thumbnail in the Top Sites view.
  3. Share favicons
  4. etc.

The latter depends on Bug 934702. I'm going to turn this one into a meta bug and re-jig the dependency tree accordingly.

Comment 5

[Brad Lassey [:blassey] (use needinfo?)]

we don't track meta bugs, please nom leaf bugs

Comment 8

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