1291627 - Enable Legacy Browser Support extension to work with Firefox

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1486360

(WebExtensions :: General, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Hector Zhao [:hectorz]]

Attachment: google-lbs.zip

With the pending removal of NPAPI support, most likely Beijing office will be forced to discontinue our fork of IETab extension/plugin, [e-mail] (which means China Online Banking Assistant).

As one possible alternative, we're looking at the Legacy Browser Support extension from Google.

The changes for my initial test is attached:

* the json manifest to native host;
* the Firefox-specific registry entry to the native manifest;
* the patch to apply against the current version (4.1)

Comment 1

[Andy McKay]

Its unclear to me what you are suggesting here, could you give me some details? 

Similar to Chrome we have implemented runtime.connectNative in bug 1190682 and we recommend people give that a try in Firefox 50 so that appropriate bugs and feedback can be filed.

The patch you have attached is a patch to the extension or to Firefox, if its a patch to the extension we suggest you contact the patch author.

Comment 2

[Hector Zhao [:hectorz]]

(In reply to Andy McKay [:andym] from comment #1)
> Its unclear to me what you are suggesting here, could you give me some
> details? 
> 

I'm suggesting that Google's Legacy Browser Support extension be ported to WebExtensions, as one of the possible rendering-some-pages-in-IE solutions, since IETab and similar extensions would stop working with the removal of NPAPI support.

> Similar to Chrome we have implemented runtime.connectNative in bug 1190682
> and we recommend people give that a try in Firefox 50 so that appropriate
> bugs and feedback can be filed.
> 

This extension relies on runtime.connectNative, I did some tests and filed this bug to track the still missing APIs for the port to be possible.

> The patch you have attached is a patch to the extension or to Firefox, if
> its a patch to the extension we suggest you contact the patch author.

The attachment contains:
> * the json manifest to native host;

The manifest format used by Firefox is different from that of Chrome

> * the Firefox-specific registry entry to the native manifest;

The registry keys are different, too

> * the patch to apply against the current version (4.1)

This patch is not the proposed solution, it's just that I have to work around the missing chrome.storage.managed etc. APIs to test other parts of the extension, and the patch will help anyone interested to re-create my work arounds.

I hope this is more clear.

Comment 3

[Andy McKay]

Ah I see, thanks for explaining. So these are changes to the add-on, presumably those add-on changes should go in another component related to the add-on? I don't know how to triage or prioritise this bug right now, since no-one on this team owns the add-on.

Comment 4

[Hector Zhao [:hectorz]]

(In reply to Andy McKay [:andym] from comment #3)
> Ah I see, thanks for explaining. So these are changes to the add-on,
> presumably those add-on changes should go in another component related to
> the add-on? I don't know how to triage or prioritise this bug right now,
> since no-one on this team owns the add-on.

Once all the dependent bugs are fixed, most of the patch will not be necessary any more. The only change needed then would be defining an id for the extension, so that it can be whitelisted in the json manifest accompanying the native binary.

Comment 5

[Firefox Bug Husbandry Bot]

Bulk move of bugs per https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1483958

Comment 6

[Hector Zhao [:hectorz]]

Looks like work from bug 1486360 is ready: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/legacy-browser-support/