1503551 - Make window.external.AddSearchProvider a dummy function

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core :: DOM: Core & HTML, enhancement)

Description

[Andrea Marchesini [:baku]]

https://html.spec.whatwg.org/#external
"The AddSearchProvider() and IsSearchProviderInstalled() methods must do nothing."

Comment 1

[Andrea Marchesini [:baku]]

Attachment: part 1 - dummy window.external methods

Let's remove the support for this function just in nightly, as smaug suggested.

Comment 2

[Andrea Marchesini [:baku]]

Attachment: part 2 - remove window.sidebar

The spec wants window.external

Comment 3

[Olli Pettay [:smaug][[e-mail]]]

Comment on attachment 9021500 [details] [diff] [review]
part 1 - dummy window.external methods

ok, let's try this.

Comment 4

[Andrea Marchesini [:baku]]

Attachment: part 1 - dummy window.external methods

Comment 5

[Andrea Marchesini [:baku]]

Just a changes in browser.ini which was brone. I guess I can keep the r+.

Comment 6

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/23850b9ba24d
Make window.external.AddSearchProvider a dummy function, r=smaug
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/7db2b627cacc
Remove window.sidebar, r=smaug

Comment 7

[Cristian Brindusan [:cbrindusan]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/23850b9ba24d
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/7db2b627cacc

Comment 8

[Kohei Yoshino [:kohei]]

Posted site compatibility note: https://www.fxsitecompat.com/en-CA/docs/2018/window-sidebar-and-window-external-addsearchprovider-have-been-deprecated/

Comment 9

[Tom S [:evilpie]]

NOOOOOOOOOOOO :( I knew this day would come, but AddSearchProvider is important for my extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-custom-search-engine/, because Firefox does not provide a reasonable way to add custom search engines.

Comment 10

[Andrea Marchesini [:baku]]

Maybe we can have a webExtension to support this feature. Do you mind to file a bug?

Comment 11

[Soufiane Sakhi]

AddSearchProvider is required by my extension as well: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/search-engines-helper/
A web extension API to add (and manage) search engines would be very welcome

Comment 12

[Tom S [:evilpie]]

(In reply to Andrea Marchesini [:baku] from comment #10)
> Maybe we can have a webExtension to support this feature. Do you mind to
> file a bug?
Opened bug 1504338

Comment 13

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

Did you remove all these APIs completely?

If so, we can't do this yet. This breaks all AMO search engines.

Please test AMO engines on nightly.

Comment 14

[Andrea Marchesini [:baku]]

(In reply to Mike Kaply [:mkaply] (on PTO until Nov 5) from comment #13)
> Did you remove all these APIs completely?

No. I just made the exposed window.external methods dummy as the spec says here:

https://html.spec.whatwg.org/#dom-external-addsearchprovider

The code is still there.

Comment 15

[Tom S [:evilpie]]

This also breaks installing search engines from https://mycroftproject.com/

Comment 16

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

Sorry, missed this comment:

> Let's remove the support for this function just in nightly, as smaug suggested.

There are a lot of other things that need to happen for this function to be completely removed.

Side note, I had originally opened another bug for this work:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1377213

The biggest blocker to putting this in release is AMO.

Comment 17

[Chris Mills [:cmills]]

OK, so I've had a go at documenting this, unusual as it is ;-)

I added a quick page covering external:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/external

I don't think we need anything more in-depth, as it is obsolete and the functions do nothing.

I've also submitted a PR to add/update compat data for these features:
https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data/pull/3111

I've noted that the external methods do nothing, and that window.sidebar has been put behind a pref in Nightly only.

I also added a note to the FX65 rel notes:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Releases/65#APIs

Let me know if this all sounds OK, or if I've got something wrong here. Thanks!

Comment 18

[Andrea Marchesini [:baku]]

> Let me know if this all sounds OK, or if I've got something wrong here.

So far, all of this happens in nightly only because we want to collect regressions. I'm planning to disable Window.external for 66.

Comment 19

[Chris Mills [:cmills]]

> So far, all of this happens in nightly only because we want to collect regressions.

OK, thanks. In that case I've removed the rel note and the nightly-only stuff from the compat data for now. I'll add them back in when it lands in release.

> I'm planning to disable Window.external for 66.

Cool; add dev-doc-needed to the relevant bugs and I'll make sure the docs are sorted!

Comment 20

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

This is a very major change that will break AMO and other sites. It can't be put in without deprecation and a plan to solve those other sites.

Comment 21

[Mycroft Project (CC)]

Am I missing something here (I haven't been following browser dev for some time)
Is this just pandering to a standard without an alternative or am I missing a suggested alternative?

Comment 22

[Linus Kardell]

So yet another example of Firefox being dumbed down into a Chrome clone by removing all useful features it has over Chrome for no apparent reason, and completely ignoring the repercussions, and labeling it as an "enhancement". You still haven't responded to the question from two years ago about what the alternative would be. This breaks sites like https://mycroftproject.com/ (with zero warning or indication, it just suddenly doesn't do anything), and makes it completely impossible to add search engines where the auto detect doesn't work, such as https://images.google.com/.