1445769 - Top Sites runs `refresh` at startup even when disabled

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: New Tab Page, defect, P3)

Description

[J. Ryan Stinnett [:jryans] (Use needinfo, replies may be slow)]

STR:

1. Disable Top Sites via the newtab gear UI
  * This sets the pref "browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.showTopSites" to false
2. TopSitesFeed.jsm#refresh is still called for at least the `INIT` action, leading to screenshot collection that will go unused

Comment 1

[Andrei Oprea [:andreio]]

Looks like the issue here is that we have 2 different prefs for controlling Topsites
* browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.topsites decides if the feed gets initialized 
* browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.showTopSites decides if the section is visible
And you would need to set both to false.

This issue should probably focus on consolidating the pref into one. Sounds like a dependency for bug 1445158.

Comment 2

[Andrei Oprea [:andreio]]

Do you know if there are any blockers preventing us from switching away from `showTopSites` and only use `feeds.topsites`?

Comment 3

[Kate Hudson :k88hudson]

I can't really think of anything, but there might have been a reason we used a different pref – perhaps check the git history just in case?

Comment 4

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

A related question is if there's anything that depends on TopSitesFeed running? E.g., TOP_SITES_UPDATED would no longer be dispatched and related TopSites.initialized would always be false?

Or any actions that depend on the feed running? TOP_SITES_PIN / PREVIEW stuff are handled there but probably don't need to do anything if we aren't showing top sites… ?

Comment 5

[GitHub Bugzilla PR Linker]

Attachment: Link to GitHub pull-request: https://github.com/mozilla/activity-stream/pull/4084

Comment 6

[[github robot]]

Commit pushed to master at https://github.com/mozilla/activity-stream

https://github.com/mozilla/activity-stream/commit/bbd820cb2d33efe7ae53ec6c7a0848a3b1a2ee83
Fix Bug 1445769 - Top Sites runs `refresh` at startup even when disabled

Comment 7

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/9896401414cb