1267151 - Add ability to hide/disable any UI element (like userChrome.css)

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Menus, defect)

Description

[YUKI "Piro" Hiroshi]

In enterprise use, needless (dangerous) features are needed to be disabled. For example, one of my customer hope to kill "Pocket" to prevent any data leak. Thus I use some addons to disable/hide menu items, toolbar buttons, and others of Firefox itself:

 * https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/globalchromecss/
 * https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/ui-text-overrider/

Actually I use globalChrome.css and UI Text Overrider for 90000+ client PCs of my customers.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gn8fFl4iseOqLEz_UIEbHCEZ7R01VW2eDlxJaFRNKEo/edit#gid=624184169

However, these addons are XUL-based and XUL will be deprecated in near future. Then there are two choices:

 A) Add new WebExtensions API to disable Firefox's any UI element.
 B) Add some secret preferences or something to disable/hide Firefox's any
    UI telement.

The choice A seems too dangerous and less useful for most type addons. So the choice B looks good for me.

Similar bugs: bug 648838, bug 1267145 (for keyboard shortcuts)

Comment 1

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

This would be a fairly major project, and introduces all kinds of testing complication when two features interact with each other.

We have no plans to implement this in Firefox for the foreseeable future.

A more narrowly targeted flavor of this request might be valid for consideration by the Webextensions team, though.

Comment 2

[YUKI "Piro" Hiroshi]

Is it a target of WebExtensions?: APIs to just disable Firefox's built-in features. I thought that such APIs are nonsense and requests may be rejected.