1461348 - Allow users to choose which add-on overrides their newtab page in the Preferences.

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1595858

(WebExtensions :: Frontend, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Blake Winton (:bwinton) (:☕️)]

It would be nice if users could choose which add-on overrides their newtab page, and even nicer if they didn't need to entirely disable the add-on when it wasn't in control.

We have mockups at https://mozilla.invisionapp.com/share/65FPNL9RH4V#/screens/280785532_Explainer which weren't implemented for 61 because of time, I hear, so let's go back and implement them.

Comment 1

[Mark Striemer [:mstriemer]]

I believe these mockups were made by the Activity Stream team but this specific portion of it is falling under WebExtensions. We've looked at these mocks and agree that it is a better solution. We've been discussing what implications this might have for other settings as well but it would indeed be nice to have this one (and the homepage) changed even if we don't update how other settings are handled.

I've added this to the agenda for our Thursday meeting to confirm that we'll move ahead with the New Tab for now.

Comment 2

[Mark Striemer [:mstriemer]]

We discussed this in the Jazz meeting and will look at moving forward here. Some notes:

  * Switching away from an extension will leave the extension enabled.
  * The banner will stay when an extension is selected, but switch the button to say Manage Extensions, rather than Disable Extension.
    * I think this should go to the extension's detail page in about:addons.
  * There was an open question about leaving a message even if the user has switched away from the extension's page. For now we will remove it and can loop back to that later.

Comment 3

[Mark Striemer [:mstriemer]]

This would still be nice to do but I think P3 is more accurate for its current priority. Removing my assignment since I'm not actively working on this.

Comment 5

[juraj.masiar]

Is there any workaround for users that want to use add-on overriding New tab page but keeping default Firefox New tab page? 
I'm author of such add-on and some of my users requested this.

This was possible in Firefox 60 where I could navigate to "about:home", but that's blocked now: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1468191