1495200 - Firefox fails to open homepage on first run, if the URL is an extension

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1490260

(WebExtensions :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[carlosbacco]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:62.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/62.0
Build ID: 20180920131237

Steps to reproduce:

I go to control panel to setup my new tab extension as home page.

As I had no option, I've set it up manually as Custom Url:
moz-extension://8ca14953-cff5-4063-8576-f7dcb0f26ded/content-scripts/bookmark-dial.html


Actual results:

I have no option to set it up as home page, so I copied the internal url by hand (cumbersome, not viable for regular user).

Doing this, pressing the homepage button goes to correct place, but when I start firefox, it goes to blank page (new tabs are still opening my extension correctly). Intermitent problem in previous versions, constant in 62.0.2

Also: I need to do it every time FF upgrades, since 60 at least. Even with the extension URL as the "custom" home page, it serves a blank page at first run.

OS: Windows 7 sp1 x64  - problem happens on two different machines, same OS

(Just FYI, extension is https://github.com/sblask/webextension-bookmark-dial, installed from the official Moz extension page)



Expected results:

What I expect is an fourth option in Home Page settings:

( o ) Same as new tab

But if I can't have it, at least respect the custom url I provided. 

MAYBE it's a race condition with extension support at initialization. Anyway, the best solution is an official way to have an option "Same as new tab", so every regular user can benefit.

Comment 1

[Daniel_A[:daschilean] [Please contact - [e-mail]]]

User Agent:  Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:64.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/64.0
Build ID: 20181002220140   
I manage to reproduce this on Windows 10 x64 with the latest Firefox Nightly 64.0a1 (2018-10-02) (64-bit).

Comment 2

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Between bug 1065424 and bug 850284, the bug as summarized has been covered already.

For add-on provided pages not working as homepage, webextension work would need to be done - given it works for new windows this is almost certainly an issue with the initialization sequence, and potentially with the need for a separate API to allow add-ons to override the homepage as well as the new tab page.

Comment 3

[carlosbacco]

(In reply to :Gijs (he/him) from comment #2)
> Between bug 1065424 and bug 850284, the bug as summarized has been covered


Not the case:  "For add-on provided pages not working as homepage"

Please, note that extension WORKS as home page. At first run FF doesn't respect it. If I close firefox and open later, it opens with the extension as homepage.

Also, when I start FF, and it fails (display blank page), pressing the Home icon loads the extension correctly.

Comment 4

[carlosbacco]

Title edited to reflect properly the main problem (Proper UI would be secondary, the problem is the bug).

Also, I'm pretty sure that "WebExtensions" isn't the correct component as edited, because the extension per se works as intended. Can someone more experienced reclassify it? I didn't reverted it to avoid it appearing some "edit war", but as it is now, I believe it should be fixed, as the problem is in FF itself.

Comment 5

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to carlosbacco from comment #4)
> Title edited to reflect properly the main problem (Proper UI would be
> secondary, the problem is the bug).
> 
> Also, I'm pretty sure that "WebExtensions" isn't the correct component as
> edited, because the extension per se works as intended. Can someone more
> experienced reclassify it? I didn't reverted it to avoid it appearing some
> "edit war", but as it is now, I believe it should be fixed, as the problem
> is in FF itself.

WebExtension support in Firefox has its own "Product" in bugzilla, just like e.g. Developer Tools. That doesn't mean there won't be a fix as part of Firefox, it simply reflects what part of Firefox the problem relates to. Other bugs with the initialization are other deps of bug 1378459, and they're all in this product.

Comment 6

[carlosbacco]

(In reply to :Gijs (he/him) from comment #5)
> (In reply to carlosbacco from comment #4)

Thanks for the clarification. I hope the new title reflects better the problem.

Comment 7

[Andrew Swan [:aswan]]

I realize the title of this duplicate describes a slightly different scenario, but the underlying issue is that extension pages loaded early during browser startup don't always get a fully functional browser object, which can break pages in all sorts of ways.