1396010 - [webextensions] Feature request: Optionally display document's title in window's title

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(WebExtensions :: Frontend, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Fabien Givors]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:54.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/54.0
Build ID: 20170614015614

Steps to reproduce:

Browse the web.



Actual results:

Window's title changes according to active tab's title.


Expected results:

I would prefer the title of Firefox's window to remain TitlePreface + " Mozilla Firefox"

This is somehow a spin-off of bug 1333376. I would like to be able to hide the title of the active tab's document from the window's title, while still displaying it on the tab bar.

Many add-ons currently performs this very task of hiding the tab's title from the browser window's title. This is a feature that can have applications for privacy enhancing, sober design and browser integration with desktop environments.

This could for example be implemented with a window property

  win_prop = { showTabTitle: False };
  browser.windows.update(myWindowId, win_prop);

showTabTitle (Optional) bool. Choose weather the active tab's title should be displayed in the browser window's title.

My add-on "FireTitle" would be almost completely portable to WebExtensions if this feature was supported (the other blocking bug being bug 1333376.)

Comment 1

[Fabien Givors]

Typo: The other blocking bug being bug 1387425.

Comment 2

[Graham Perrin]

From <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1333376#c43> under '1333376 - Feature request: a WebExtension API to change the window title': 

> It was discussed and decided that being able to add a preface to the title (as opposed to changing the entire title to an arbitrary string) was preferable and does meet most of the use cases for this feature, and that is what has been implemented. …

I was quietly shocked by that limitation. My basic use case, with released versions of Firefox, is somewhat the opposite of adding a prefix. 

Instead, I remove the suffix – 

     - Mozilla Firefox

– from every title. 

Wherever a Firefox icon appears in (for example) the task manager of KDE, the phrase –

     - Mozilla Firefox

– is entirely superfluous. 

In addition: wherever the title of a page is short, I'm _disoriented_ by sight (in the task manager) of all or part of the word 'Mozilla', because the vast majority of such pages are unrelated to Mozilla. 

Generally, the suffix is unwanted noise. YMMV; I rely **very** heavily on proper, meaningful (not misleading) titles … maybe because I'm dyslexic. 

(Side note: before switching to FreeBSD I was a Mac user for around 25 years. The suffixing behaviour was a rarity with Mac OS X … three years after the switch, the suffixes still seem terribly alien to me.)

----

Mozilla developers and reviewers: **please** make whatever code changes will be necessary to allow proper, flexible enhancement of titles by add-ons such as FireTitle. 

Thank you

Comment 3

[apoorvasingh2811]

Hi, can I take this up?

Comment 4

[Andy McKay]

This hasn't been approved by the design-decision public meeting yet, so any work you do is welcome, but may not be accepted.

Comment 5

[Matthew Kidd]

I totally agree with Graham Perrin that the '- Mozilla Firefox' suffix is superfluous. The Firefox icon is quite sufficient. Either WebExtensions should support removing this suffix or the browser should have a user option to allow it to be removed.

Comment 6

[kamracik]

I also agree with others that this limitation should be removed.

Personally I would like to have option to leave title bar caption static, due to some privacy stuff. I don't like informing other application which have access to my processes to read from title bar information which pages I'm on. In same time I would like to keep page description at tab title.

Comment 7

[Caitlin Neiman [:caitmuenster]]

Hi Fabien, this has been added to the agenda for the February 6, 2018 WebExtensions APIs triage. 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/WebExtensions/Triage#Next_Meeting
* Meeting agenda: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1731b2kkN1wndNzVvo--5gwUcagbOSKGNYv4769r68NM/edit#
* Vision doc for WebExtensions: https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebExtensions/Vision

Comment 8

[Fabien Givors]

Hi,
Thanks for the ping.
I'm on #addons as captnfab. Unfortunately, I'm not sure whether I'll be physically present at the time of the discussion.

Comment 9

[Fabien Givors]

Hi,
I wasn't able to join you. I'm quite saddened by the decision.
Could you please give me the motivation for the rejection?

Comment 10

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

(In reply to Fabien Givors from comment #9)
> Hi,
> I wasn't able to join you. I'm quite saddened by the decision.
> Could you please give me the motivation for the rejection?

Absolutely, sorry for the delay (I was going to add a detailed comment about the motivations, but it was a bit late in my timezone right after the meeting and I wanted to provide enough details about the reasons behind the decision)

The reasons behind the rejection are mainly the following:

- providing an API to change the window title behavior on a per-window basis is going to be potentially confusing for the user (e.g. the extension may change the title only on some of the window, and it would not be immediately clear to the user why some window titles are behaving differently from others)

- there are multiple places where the window title string is visible (besides the window title), e.g. the legacy extension which is mentioned in Comment 0 (FireTitle) seems to also ensure that the menu popup that lists the windows is also updated accordingly (and there could be potentially other places in the Firefox UI where the window title should be the same as the one shown in the window title bar), and so it seems something that should be allowed by the Firefox UX before evaluating if and how an extension could be allowed to customize this behavior on behalf of the user.

And so, what we are denying a new WebExtension API to directly change a window title, especially in a way that is potentially inconsistent (e.g. on different windows and different parts of the Firefox UI).

A different approach could be:

- file an issue so that the behavior of the window title can be globally changed by the user, e.g. from about:preferences, as a feature of the Firefox UX (instead of a WebExtensions API)

- if such a feature is accepted and implemented as a Firefox UX feature, then we could evaluate if it would be reasonable to allow an extension to toggle that setting (and the user would also have a UI to know why is it happening and to revert that custom behavior easily by going to the about:preferences) as part of the browserSettings API (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API/browserSettings).

Comment 11

[Fabien Givors]

Thanks for the reply. I must say I agree with you that this shouldn't be a per-window configuration, and that the proposed API could bring its lot of problems along with the feature I was looking for.

I already thought about the suggested approach, but at the time I found it less likely to be accepted since it would affect all users and not only those interested by this feature.

I'll try to submit a feature request to firefox ux then.

Thanks for your work,

Comment 12

[Graham Perrin]

This denial of enhancement is a source of multiple confusions.

First: 

(In reply to Luca Greco [:rpl] from comment #10)

> … The reasons behind the rejection are mainly the following:
> 
> - providing an API to change the window title behavior on a per-window basis …

If there's no such API, then how does Rename Tab Title work with Firefox Quantum? 

<https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/rename-tab-title/>

Does it work because whilst there's no API to change per-window, there _is_ an API to change per-tab?

----

A few months ago … I don't doubt that there was an element of humour when 'FireTitle' for Firefox was complemented by '**** Firetitle' for Firefox Quantum. 

Now … I can not pussyfoot around this: 

- for as Firefox Quantum will prevent sane use of 
  sane add-ons such as the original FireTitle, it 
  can never be my preferred browser. 

For me, it's not _solely_ the use case that's outlined at <https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/firetitle/reviews/920633/>. 

There's also – amongst other things – the necessity to use a considerately-extended browser in an enterprise environment where, it seems, Microsoft unwittingly encourages SharePoint page authors to not title their pages. For any person who is not a power user with hundreds of tabs, multi-tasking in that type of environment, it might be difficult to appreciate the depths of aggravation. 

If I can't work around deficiencies such as those with Firefox Quantum, it's pretty much a show-stopper.

Comment 13

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

(In reply to Graham Perrin from comment #12)
> If there's no such API, then how does Rename Tab Title work with Firefox
> Quantum? 
> 
> <https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/rename-tab-title/>
> 
> Does it work because whilst there's no API to change per-window, there _is_
> an API to change per-tab?

That extension changes the title of the webpages from a content script 
(which follows the same behavior expected by a webpage that change its own title, 
e.g. it can't remove the "- Mozilla Firefox" part of the title,
that is definitely not there just to annoy the user, quite the contrary, e.g. 
a webpage or an extension can't trick the user by changing its own title in a way that
it can be confused for the window related to another application).

> There's also – amongst other things – the necessity to use a
> considerately-extended browser in an enterprise environment where, it seems,
> Microsoft unwittingly encourages SharePoint page authors to not title their
> pages. For any person who is not a power user with hundreds of tabs,
> multi-tasking in that type of environment, it might be difficult to
> appreciate the depths of aggravation. 
> 
> If I can't work around deficiencies such as those with Firefox Quantum, it's
> pretty much a show-stopper.

Setting a title on the webpages that are missing a title is already possible,
e.g. using the same strategy of the extension linked above, using 
a content script (or even from a small user script for Greasemonkey 
or a similar "userScripts" extensions).

Comment 14

[Matthew Kidd]

(In reply to Luca Greco [:rpl] from comment #13)
> That extension changes the title of the webpages from a content script 
> (which follows the same behavior expected by a webpage that change its own
> title, e.g. it can't remove the "- Mozilla Firefox" part of the title,
> that is definitely not there just to annoy the user, quite the contrary,
> e.g. a webpage or an extension can't trick the user by changing its own
> title in a way that it can be confused for the window related to another
> application).

I'm not buying the logic here. The Firefox icon is enough to indicate that
the window is a Firefox window. Another application is going to have a
different icon. Regardless of the resolution of instant bug, there should
be a simple preference that allows stripping '- Mozilla Firefox' from the
title for minimally competent (not even advanced) users.

Comment 15

[Kevin]

I'm not buying it either. Please Make it strippable.  It has zero value. Love me some Grease Monkey but if I have to use it for this, I'm on my way out. We try desperately to stay with Firefox despite the 57 torture but stuff like this just makes it impossible. Last one out please turn the lights off.

Comment 16

[Graham Perrin]

(In reply to Luca Greco [:rpl] from comment #13)

Thanks for the explanation. I'm exasperated by decisions such as these but still, thankful for the explanation.

Comment 17

[Jonathan]

What's the next step here?

I didn't find a newer issue filed by Fabien to UX

Why would that be the thing to do anyway? Can't the issue just be moved there, preserving this history?

Comment 18

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

Hi Jonathan,

(In reply to Jonathan from comment #17)

What's the next step here?

I didn't find a newer issue filed by Fabien to UX

Why would that be the thing to do anyway? Can't the issue just be moved there, preserving this history?

This bug has been closed as wontfix a long time ago and so it would be better to file a new issue and just reference this one in the new bug.

It has been a long time from when we triaged this bug and so I can't recall all the details of that discussion (besides what described in the issue comments), but in short I think that our suggestion was to:

• open a bugzilla issue in the "Firefox" bugzilla product (and the "Untriaged" bugzilla component) to let Firefox Desktop frontend engineers to evaluate the request for an option available to users (either an about:config pref or an option in about:preferences) that would make Firefox to omit the "Mozilla Firefox" part of the default window titles
• then, if that request is accepted and the change introduced in Firefox, we may opt to re-open this issue to expose that browser setting through the existing browserSettings WebExtensions API.

Feel free to file the issue if Fabien didn't (then comment in this bug to let us know and I'll take care of linking the two issues together).

Comment 19

[Jonathan]

Opened here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1667664

Luca: Anything I should've done differently? :)

Comment 20

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

Thanks Jonathan, the description of the issue looks good to me.

Our bugzilla bot wrongly moved the newly filed bug into the Add-on Manager bugzilla component (I guess because it did saw add-on mentioned in the issue description) and so I moved it back to Firefox :: Untriaged.

(I'm also clearing the pending needinfo assigned to the reporter, because now the bug has been filed and linked to this issue as a "see also").