1246693 - Provide WebExtension Thumbnail API

Status: NEW

(WebExtensions :: Frontend, enhancement, P3)

Description

[sblask]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:44.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/44.0
Build ID: 20160125133541

Comment 1

[sblask]

I've got an extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bookmark-dial/ (and there are several others) that generate thumbnails. I know there is a service today that does it, but it won't be accessible from WebExtensions. It would be great if there would be a WebExtension API that I can call with a URL and that generates a thumbnail and returns a URL to it. Ideally there would be a way to modify the CSS for it (this is how I do it now: https://github.com/sblask/firefox-bookmark-dial/blob/master/lib/thumbnail.js#L89 / https://github.com/sblask/firefox-bookmark-dial/blob/master/data/thumbnail_tab_content_script.js)

Alternatively, there could be streamlined version of what I do today: open a tab, hide it, apply style and capture it. What would be missing is hiding a tab (this is what I do today: https://github.com/sblask/firefox-bookmark-dial/blob/master/lib/thumbnail.js#L30 (collapsed + disabled)) and capturing any tab(not just the currently visible one) to allow for background generation.

Comment 2

[YUKI "Piro" Hiroshi]

Is this covered by chrome.tabs.captureVisibleTab() ?
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API/Tabs/captureVisibleTab

Comment 3

[sblask]

No, because any tab should be capturable, not just the currently visible one.

Comment 7

[Andy McKay]

This seems like a good idea, we haven't talked about it much because the whiteboard tag was wrong, but I can't imagine this being that controversial and I don't think there's anything that does this already. As a minor point I'm commenting on this bug using VerticalTabs which is showing a thumbnail of the window in the tab...

Comment 8

[matthias koplenig [:metasieben]]

looking at this sample-code from developer.chrome.com there is an api in chrome to get the thumbnail.


[1]
  "permissions": [
    "topSites",
    "chrome://favicon/"
  ],

--
[2]
  eightBallWindow.style.backgroundImage = 'url(chrome://favicon/' +
      data[rand].url + ')';


[1] https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/examples/api/topsites/magic8ball/manifest.json
[2] https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/examples/api/topsites/magic8ball/newTab.js

Comment 9

[sblask]

(In reply to matthias koplenig from comment #8)

A favicon is not the same as a thumbnail...

Comment 10

[ariasuni]

Any news on this?

Comment 11

[said.fox]

I agree with this request. Why it is not available for the developer but it available for the Firefox itself? We need a thumb property for the topSite object.

Comment 12

[Jeremy]

I would imagine there may be security concerns in terms of how the resulting images would be used. A use case might be someone with a tab containing bank account or other sensistive information. Not saying FF is leaky about that, but just that it would probably be a concern on the user side.