1482529 - Implement "visible" parameter in menus.create and menus.update

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(WebExtensions :: Frontend, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Rob Wu [:robwu]]

Currently, when an extension wants to hide a menu, they have to resort to one of the following methods hacks:
- Remove menu via the remove or removeAll methods in the menus or contextMenus namespace.
  (disadvantage: menu order is lost because menus are currently shown in the order of creation)
- Update the menu with the update method, and set one of the values to something that never matches.

Neither method is ideal, and I was wondering whether there is a better way to offer this functionality.
Turns out, Chrome's contextMenus API already offers the "visible" property which fulfills these needs.

Chrome supports this since version 62:
https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=463476
https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/contextMenus#property-createProperties-visible

Comment 1

[kernp25]

Can we also implement enabled [1]?

[1] https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/contextMenus#property-createProperties-enabled

Comment 2

[Rob Wu [:robwu]]

(In reply to kernp25 from comment #1)
> Can we also implement enabled [1]?
> 
> [1] https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/contextMenus#property-createProperties-enabled

The "enabled" property is already supported by Firefox.

Comment 3

[Mike Conca [:mconca]]

This seems like a good idea for both usability and compatibility.

Comment 4

[Rob Wu [:robwu]]

Attachment: Bug 1482529 - Support "visible" in menus.create and menus.update

Comment 5

[Shane Caraveo (:mixedpuppy)]

Comment on attachment 9002469 [details]
Bug 1482529 - Support "visible" in menus.create and menus.update

Shane Caraveo (:mixedpuppy) has approved the revision.

Comment 6

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/f66ffcb2e82a
Support "visible" in menus.create and menus.update r=mixedpuppy

Comment 7

[Natalia Csoregi [:nataliaCs]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/f66ffcb2e82a

Comment 8

[Rob Wu [:robwu]]

Note for compat table ( https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data ).
This feature is supported since Firefox 63, Chrome 62 (desktop only) and Opera 49.

Comment 9

[CosminB]

Attachment: Bug1482529.gif

This issue is verified as fixed on Firefox 63.0a1(20180827100129) under Win 7 64-bit and Mac OS X 10.13.3.

The “visible” parameter work as expected for menus.create and menus.update.

Please see the attached video.

Comment 10

[Will Bamberg [:wbamberg]]

I've added `visible` to the `createProperties` object in https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API/menus/create, and also added it to the compat data.

Marking as dev-doc-complete, but please let me know if we need anything else.