1378568 - Add a tabs.captureActiveTab or equivalent

Status: NEW

(WebExtensions :: General, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Andy McKay]

Currently tabs.captureVisibleTab requires the <all_urls> permission. That's triggers a rather more scary warning to the user. That's probably because it can be passed a window parameter and capture the tab thumbnail for any tab in a window.

It would be cool if we could have a thumbnail generator that is scoped just to the activeTab permission. We could make a new API for that, or limit the existing API to reject the API call if window is specified and <all_urls> is not requested.

As an example, sidebar-tabs-redux asks for all_urls to use this API and if this API existed it wouldn't have to.

Example add-on: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-center-redux/
Capture visible tab API: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API/Tabs/captureVisibleTab

Comment 1

[Andy McKay]

s/warning/permission/

Generally, the less extensions asking for <all_urls>, the better.

Comment 2

[Caitlin Neiman [:caitmuenster]]

This has been added to the agenda for the September 5, 2017 WebExtensions APIs triage meeting. Anyone interested in this bug is welcome to attend! 

Wiki: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Contribute/Triage#Next_Meeting

Agenda: https://docs.google.com/document/d/13gmYyN0qCjzV7YAsqGpbeeHr3al0yiWP7ayqKJPLS2w/edit#

Comment 3

[Andy McKay]

Attachment: bug 1378568 allow activeTab for captureVisibleTab

Review commit: https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/176966/diff/#index_header
See other reviews: https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/176966/

Comment 4

[Shane Caraveo (:mixedpuppy)]

Comment on attachment 8905187 [details]
bug 1378568 allow activeTab for captureVisibleTab

https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/176966/#review182042

This changes the definition of activeTab per mdn docs which defines it as being triggered by a user action.

Comment 5

[Andy McKay]

Thanks Shane, that's a good point. I don't really want to change the meaning of activeTab. The thumbnail exposes the content of the page, so it is actually accessing the data of the page. We could put in a "Access the screenshot" of the page permission, but I'm not sure its worth it.

Comment 6

[Firefox Bug Husbandry Bot]

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