1428485 - Support for extensions which add alternate user input methods, such as mouse gestures, which work on all pages

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(WebExtensions :: Untriaged, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Nameless Voice]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:56.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/56.0
Build ID: 20171024165158




Expected results:

With the new extension framework in Firefox 57 and upwards, it is no longer possible for extensions to add new user input methods, such as mouse gestures, and have them properly function in all parts of the browser.

The best that extensions can manage in the current framework is to allow these input methods on fully loaded pages, and they cannot operate on "protected" pages such as browser internal pages (new tab, various about: pages), and cannot work on addons.mozilla.org.

That leads to a very bad user experience.  If a user wants to use an alternate input message, then they want it to work *everywhere*.
It's really unpleasant for e.g. the mouse gestures that the user uses to simply not work on some pages or under some circumstances, completely throwing off their flow.


See also; 1413874, which asks for native support for mouse gestures.

Comment 1

[Caitlin Neiman [:caitmuenster]]

Hi Nameless VOice, this has been added to the agenda for the January 16, 2018 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/WebExtensions/Triage#Next_Meeting
* Meeting agenda: https://docs.google.com/document/d/13AiUqFgtLsuJ17QjzUOQ7nBN1U_ZEO0yzMaHLLl0JKk/edit#
* Vision doc for WebExtensions: https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebExtensions/Vision

Comment 2

[Nameless Voice]

Yes, I will try to join the IRC channel at that time.

Comment 3

[Mike Conca [:mconca]]

Using extensions to provide full support for alternate input methods, such as mouse gestures, to all parts of the browser is very difficult and perhaps impossible without violating the WebExtensions sandbox and security model. The right way to do this is at the product/platform level, which is being tracked in bug 1413874.

Comment 4

[zakius]

I'd say basic gestures events would be doable pretty easily and safely, but there's another issue: ability to execute commands is not there, closing current tab or accessing history from background script just won't work

for the first part I created experiment but seeing how I just can't do anything even though I have events working I gave up https://github.com/zakius/GesturesExperiment note that this probably should be marked as user gesture if it ever got actually used