1495888 - support APIs needed by Hypothes.is

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(WebExtensions :: Compatibility, enhancement)

Description

[Dietrich Ayala (:dietrich)]

I did a quick experiment to see what compat problems Hypothes.is would have migrating their Chrome extension to Firefox.

Here's the list of issues I immediately hit:

* Error processing background.persistent: Event pages are not currently supported. This will run as a persistent background page.

* Error processing version_name: An unexpected property was found in the WebExtension manifest.

* Error processing key: An unexpected property was found in the WebExtension manifest.

* Error processing offline_enabled: An unexpected property was found in the WebExtension manifest.

* Error processing externally_connectable: An unexpected property was found in the WebExtension manifest.

* Error processing incognito: Invalid enumeration value "split"

* They also hit the missing app id error when accessing storage. How does Chrome handle this when in development mode? If possible, we should be compatible, removing workflow papercuts like this for developers.

Comment 1

[Kris Maglione [:kmag]]

(In reply to Dietrich Ayala (:dietrich) from comment #0)
> I did a quick experiment to see what compat problems Hypothes.is would have
> migrating their Chrome extension to Firefox.
> 
> Here's the list of issues I immediately hit:
> 
> * Error processing background.persistent: Event pages are not currently
> supported. This will run as a persistent background page.

This doesn't matter.

> * Error processing version_name: An unexpected property was found in the
> WebExtension manifest.

We're unlikely to implement this.

> * Error processing key: An unexpected property was found in the WebExtension
> manifest.

This is Chrome-specific. Our version is applications.gecko.id

> * Error processing offline_enabled: An unexpected property was found in the
> WebExtension manifest.

This is only relevant to Chrome apps.

> * Error processing externally_connectable: An unexpected property was found
> in the WebExtension manifest.

We're probably not ever going to implement this.

> * Error processing incognito: Invalid enumeration value "split"

This is bug 1380809.

> * They also hit the missing app id error when accessing storage. How does
> Chrome handle this when in development mode? If possible, we should be
> compatible, removing workflow papercuts like this for developers.

The "key" property.

Comment 2

[Tomislav Jovanovic :zombie]

I agree, other than bug 1380809 (which is in progress), there doesn't seem much actionable here.  Feel free to reopen if you have something more concrete.

We are not making a bug-for-bug clone of Chrome extensions (it would be impossible, especially with them not collaborating), so pretending that any non-trivial extension can just be uploaded to AMO without testing and reading about subtle (and not so subtle) differences on MDN would be disingenuous.

In that context, maintaining two separate manifests doesn't seem like a big burden.