125419 - [META]Add AppleScript support and capabilities to Mozilla on Mac, e.g. AppleScript/OSA Script menu

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: General, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Joel Nelson (don't send email)]

Add AppleScript support and capabilities to Mozilla on Mac OS 9 and X.  This
would include the Scripting Dictionary which is built-in to AppleScript
compatible Mac applications, adding a Script menu to the menu bar, and adding
"launch AppleScript" as an option in message rules.

Comment 1

[R.K.Aa.]

Dup of bug 58590?
Related:
DoJavascript event: bug 5704
Better AE support: bug 5701
Implement advanced XPConnect-to-AppleScript/OSA glue layer: bug 61356

Comment 2

[Joel Nelson (don't send email)]

It is similar to those four bugs although still a little different.  I would
recommend leaving it as a separate bug although you could mark it as duplicate
if needed.  This bug is more of a summary of the entire problem, while the other
bugs are more to individual issues with AppleScript.

Comment 3

[Greg K.]

Let's keep to one issue per bug, please. Making this one about adding the Script menu. Joel, 
please file another about message rules only.

Comment 4

[Joel Nelson (don't send email)]

Marking OS to "All" to include Mac OS 8, Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X.  (Was: Mac OS 9)

Comment 5

[David Bradley]

Should a meta bug be created, or this turned into that?

Comment 6

[Phil Schwartau]

From Comment #2, sounds like this should be the meta bug. 
Reassigning to Tracking component and adding the bugs mentioned
in Comment#1 as dependencies.

If anyone knows of any other AppleScript issues filed in Bugzilla,
please add them as dependencies, too -

Comment 7

[Jean-Pierre Melkonian]

I add my bugs (or enhancements)
bug 156010
bug 156013
bug 158386
bug 158388

Comment 8

[Greg K.]

OS should not be All (that includes LinuxPPC). Setting to 8.5, since that's the
oldest supported Mac OS at this point.

Comment 9

[Jo Hermans]

Shouldn't we move this to Mac OS X ? Mac OS 8.5 and 9 support is dead now ...

Comment 10

[Samir Gehani]

adt: removing nsbeta1 nomination; nominate bugs indiviually as appropriate.

Comment 11

[Torben]

Updating OS to a supported one.

Comment 12

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

*** Bug 308558 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 13

[db]

Any updates on this issue?

Comment 14

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

I've seen the lack of this noted on a couple reviews of the Firefox 3 betas recently. Certainly too major to make it into Firefox 3, but probably worth getting back on the radar.  I think wanted-next would be more appropriate than wanted1.9.0.x, but it doesn't seem to want to let me pick that one.

Comment 15

[Samuel Sidler (old account; do not CC)]

Moving flags around since wanted1.9.1 and blocking1.9.1 now exist.

Comment 16

[cynthia.lockley]

Broken AppleScript support in Firefox 3 cripples URL Manager Pro and other bookmark manager applications for Mac OS X because they cannot get the name and URL of the current web page. This was my experience in OS X 10.4.11 and now in OS X 10.5.5. I get a message that there is no browser running or there is no browser window open.

Comment 17

[Samuel Sidler (old account; do not CC)]

Comment 16 is bug 427448, which is fixed on the trunk.

Comment 18

[bluloo]

Lack of AppleScript support makes FF less useful for research because it doesn’t play well with desktop apps, like DevonThink, intended to compliment built in OS X technologies, such as AppleScript.

Comment 19

[HMJ]

It looks like it has been a very long time since this problem was first raised, and nothing so far has been done about it and no feedback is evident from Mozilla. There is still no support for Applescript in FF 3.6.3 (as of 5/8/2010) for Mac OSX (now at 10.6.3), and that means I still cannot use URL Manager Pro to manage cross browser bookmarks.  Why has nothing been done about this?

Comment 20

[Aaron]

This addition is important in so many ways to mac users... it makes me think that there must not be any mac users on the development team, otherwise this would have been done a long time ago. I should learn how to write for mozilla, but I think it may be a while before I understand it enough to fix this issue.

Comment 21

[Craig Williams]

Yes, please add AppleScript support. Thanks!

Comment 22

[HMJ]

Would someone at Mozilla please respond to these requests, or explain why this will/cannot be done?

Comment 23

[Josh Aas]

We are aware that people want better AppleScript support but simply put, it has not been a high enough priority to get developer time. We would, of course, always accept a patch contribution.

We don't need any more "me too" comments here, thanks.

Comment 24

[Albert Zeyer]

Curios, what is the state here? I actually only need to get the URL of the front window. This should be quite trivial on the Firefox site to be implemented. Why isn't it?

I guess this would maybe take an hour or so to be implemented for someone who is not experienced with the Firefox/Mozilla source (excluding the time to setup the build environment -- no idea how complicated that is) and maybe about 5-10 minutes for someone who is.

I would look at this (at least for just getting the URL) if I would know that this would be applied soon after to the stable branch and will got into FF4. (Otherwise it would be no use for me.)

But mostly I am curios: Why haven't it been done already? Can someone give some technical details?

Comment 26

[Luke Hamburg]

Wow, 18 years to grab the current URL from the active tab? I am trying to dump Chrome forever but some automation/scripting that I rely on requires being able to programmatically obtain the current tab's URL from AppleScript or via some other CLI interface. Is there any way this can get some attention? Seems like the plumbing is already in place, since the following returns quite a lot of info about the current tab, just not the URI/URL.

tell application "Firefox"
	get properties of front window
end tell

Comment 27

[David Shepherdson]

For what it's worth, some hacky workarounds for this are discussed in this thread on the Keyboard Maestro forum. Although the details of that discussion are fairly specific to Keyboard Maestro, many of the same techniques could be achieved using 'plain' AppleScript, though with a little more effort required.

Comment 28

[ty.lastrapes]

Mozilla - Please give this bug some love. Multiple reasons are explained by others here:

Alfred Forum Explanation

https://www.jeremycherfas.net/blog/no-applescript-in-firefox

Thank you for your consideration.

Comment 29

[Gian-Carlo Pascutto [:gcp]]

A contributor is working on this in bug 1655268.

Comment 30

[Donald Guy]

A slightly simpler workaround than the ones linked to in Keyboard Maestro land is to use something like (or exactly) this extension:
https://github.com/erichgoldman/add-url-to-window-title / https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-url-to-window-title/

set extension preferences to show full url & then use a script like

on explode(delimiter, input)
	local delimiter, input, ASTID
	set ASTID to AppleScript's text item delimiters
	try
		set AppleScript's text item delimiters to delimiter
		set input to text items of input
		set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ASTID
		return input --> list
	on error eMsg number eNum
		set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ASTID
		error "Can't explode: " & eMsg number eNum
	end try
end explode

tell application id "org.mozilla.firefoxdeveloperedition"
	set wintitle to name of (get front window)
	
	return last item of my explode("- ", wintitle)
end tell