Closed
Bug 1054395
Opened 10 years ago
Closed 5 years ago
Adapt Thunderbird to changes in autocomplete protocol
Categories
(Thunderbird :: General, defect)
Thunderbird
General
Tracking
(Not tracked)
RESOLVED
WORKSFORME
People
(Reporter: rkent, Unassigned)
References
Details
From m.d.platform post on 2014-08-15:
As part of a renewed effort to improve the user experience of location
bar searches in Firefox, we have been working on the shared code
handling search-as-you-type in textboxes [1], which is located in Toolkit.
*Current issues*
It soon became apparent that most of the autocomplete code was designed
for synchronous operation, and did not have the flexibility to handle
the use cases we needed out of the box. Until now, we have been dealing
with that by stacking non-breaking changes over the existing code. This
makes the code more complex while adding features that will ultimately
only be used in Firefox. This is also creating additional work in cases
where we try to preserve backwards compatibility and fail, which has
required follow-up work from both our team and the Thunderbird team.
We're now evaluating a different approach for which we'll trim down the
shared code to remove anything that is not needed. We'll rework and
simplify the XPCOM interfaces, gradually moving to JavaScript where
possible, and we'll separate the front-end styling from the search
implementation.
The simple autocomplete cases used by most add-ons, like textboxes with
autocompletesearch="history" attributes, will continue to work as usual,
but we'll be removing less used features like multiple search sources.
We'll document the changes so that add-ons and other products have the
information required to adapt their code.
In fact, a search on the mozilla-central [2] and comm-central [3]
repositories shows that this shared autocomplete code is only used on
Desktop by Firefox and Thunderbird, while SeaMonkey uses the older XPFE
autocomplete. Other Toolkit components like Form History use the
autocomplete code, but they are used only by Firefox and will be updated
to use the new interfaces as they are developed.
The major change would be the removal of the multiple search sources
from the autocomplete code, since this feature is used heavily by
Thunderbird. For Firefox, we already developed the UnifiedComplete
component that replaces the multiple searches in the location bar, but a
similar work would be required for Thunderbird.
*Proposal*
Since I believe the amount of work and testing required in Thunderbird
to keep up with the changes could be non-trivial, my suggestion would
be to fork the current version of the autocomplete code from Toolkit to
the comm-central repository. The autocomplete code itself does not
depend on other components, and "pinning" the current version in
Thunderbird would make it easier to keep up with the planned rapid
development. Any wanted changes could then be imported as needed.
We don't plan on starting this effort until mid-September at the
earliest, maybe later, so there should be time to decide a course of
action and implement the fork.
This plan is based on some research on the current state of the source
tree, but feel free to share any additional information or concern we
may have overlooked. Keep in mind that one of our requirements is to
decommission the current XPCOM interfaces for autocomplete in
mozilla-central, and avoid keeping obsolete code there. We're doing
this to reduce the effort required by our planned innovations, at the
cost of breaking backwards compatibility in some cases.
If you have any other questions or suggestions, just let me know!
Cheers,
Paolo
[1]
http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/toolkit/components/autocomplete/
[2]
http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/search?string=autocompletesearch%3D
[3] http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/search?string=autocompletesearch%3D
Reporter | ||
Updated•10 years ago
|
Alias: mail-autocomplete
Blocks: cc-backlog
I have recently found that autocomplete of message compose addresses for the latest updates of TB Beta (since approx last week) have not been working - i.e. not picking up any addresses in my address book. If I try in the current release version autocomplete is working fine.
TB beta version : 36.0
Is the above causing this issue by any chance? in which case is there a danger of the beta version bug making it's way into the release anytime soon?
I have added a bug for the TB issue separately, I just wanted to flag up any possible overlap
TB bug id:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1138027
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1138027
as you can see I have now marked the above bug as invalid as I found to be an add-on compatibility issue
Comment 3•5 years ago
|
||
The above plans never materialized. Let's have a new bug if they ever resurface.
Alias: mail-autocomplete
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 5 years ago
Resolution: --- → WORKSFORME
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Description
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