1394431 - Support home panel add-ons on Android

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(WebExtensions :: Android, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Jan Henning [:JanH]]

Currently, add-ons on Android can add custom panels to about:home [1] and it would be nice to keep that capability. I'm not really sure about the implementation, but maybe it might be possible and make sense to integrate this with Desktop's sidebar API, i.e. add-ons that add a custom sidebar on Desktop would add an additional about:home panel on Android.

[1] See e.g. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/search/?q=panel&appver=&platform= and some of the results for https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/search/?q=panel

Comment 1

[Luca Greco [:rpl] [:luca] [:lgreco]]

I like the idea of providing an API to allow a WebExtension to define this kind of Home panels,
but I'm not sure that it could actually being a replacement for the sidebar, mainly for the following two reasons:

- the currently provided API is oriented to the creation of a list or grid views:

  - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/Legacy_Firefox_for_Android/API/HomeProvider.jsm
  - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/Legacy_Firefox_for_Android/API/Home.jsm/panels#View_types
  - https://github.com/leibovic/hub-boilerplate

  and it doesn't currently support an HTML page embedded in a Home panel

- the sidebar extension page is an extension UI element which is supposed to be visible at the same time of the webpage loaded in a tab, while the Home panels are available in new tabs where no webpage has been currently loaded yet (which could be different from how a Firefox for Desktop, or Opera where the sidebar API has been defined for the first time, extension could assume)

Nevertheless, it could be an interesting "Firefox for Android"-specific WebExtensions API once we have designed a proper WebExtension API (and after that we have been made sure that there are no plans to remove this feature from "Firefox for Android").

Comment 2

[Caitlin Neiman [:caitmuenster]]

Hi Jan, this has been added to the agenda for the November 14 WebExtensions APIs triage meeting. Would you be able to join us? 

Here’s a quick overview of what to expect at the triage: 

* We normally spend 5 minutes per bug
* The more information in the bug, the better
* The goal of the triage is to give a general thumbs up or thumbs down on a proposal; we won't be going deep into implementation details

Relevant Links: 

* Wiki for the meeting: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Contribute/Triage
* Meeting agenda: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1g3RMfKZ3671NcusMqkoOiKwfPekRe-VI7Rzqxo6F_Ao/edit#
* Vision doc for WebExtensions: https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebExtensions/Vision

Comment 3

[Luca Greco [:rpl] [:luca] [:lgreco]]

We discussed about this API request in the last WebExtensions APIs triage meeting and we come to the agreement of denying a "Firefox for Android" specific API based on the HomeProvider.jsm API, and so this is design-decision-denied.

Nevertheless, Bug 1401194 is going to introduce a newTabSection API for Firefox for Desktop, and once the API is finalized on Desktop, it would be possible to evaluate how to provide a compatible API on Firefox for Android as well (maybe built on top of the HomeProvider.jsm API, if the API to provide can be reasonably mapped on top of it).

Comment 4

[Kris Maglione [:kmag]]

Closing all open bugs with the [design-decision-denied] whiteboard flag.