1411724 - Allow webextensions to scroll and navigate history on all pages

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(WebExtensions :: General, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Colin Caine]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/52.0
Build ID: 20170921064520

Steps to reproduce:

This is a sub-bug of https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1403295

To make alternative interfaces to firefox more consistent, please allow webextensions to perform these basic actions on all pages (including about:*, AMO, etc.).

This isn't that useful on its own (how would you know when to trigger the actions on restricted pages?), but with the keyboard API it will allow a keyboard-driven interface to work on restricted pages.

# Functions needed because content scripts can't be on restricted pages

 - History navigation (forward/back/reload/home/stop)
 - Scrolling
 - Focus next/previous frame
 - Edit commands (copy/cut/delete/paste/redo/undo/selectall)

Comment 1

[Rizwan Syed]

Hi all, is this still an open bug you would like to work on? I am looking for my next bug and, if so, I will start researching this issue.

Comment 2

[Oliver Blanthorn]

As the OP says, it doesn't make a huge amount of sense to add this functionality without a way of calling it, such as that suggested in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215061. I believe nobody is currently working on that.

If you want some more context as to why this bug was filed, https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl/issues/760 might help.

Comment 3

[Andrew Swan [:aswan]]

This is still available to work on, but the description isn't very precise. I think the first step would be to make a concrete proposal for exactly what you want to implement.
I've removed myself from the Mentor field since I no longer work on addons full-time, if you have questions about what exactly we are willing to expose to extensions, I would suggest directing them to :mconca.