1533271 - GV API to enable offline browsing mode

Status: NEW

(GeckoView :: General, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Jan Henning [:JanH]]

The GeckoView equivalent of browser.tabs.useCache, i.e. basically the ability to toggle the Ci.nsIRequest.LOAD_FROM_CACHE load flag.

I'm not sure whether GeckoView itself should contain only a dumb toggle (use offline browsing always/never) and leave the decision when to turn that on/off completely to embedders, or whether it should also offer the option to automatically turn on offline browsing when the network connection is lost.
However regardless of whether the automatic mode is implemented in GeckoView or the embedding app/android-components, we would finally have to tackle bug 1373756 before being able to enable any automatic.
But a simple toggle should be possible regardless.

This would be one way of supporting https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/196.

Comment 2

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

Fenix would need to monitor offline status themselves (possibly with a network monitor A-C component) and then tell GeckoView to enter offline mode.

Comment 3

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

67=wontfix. Fenix MVP will use GeckoView 68, so we don't need to uplift this fix to 67 Beta.

Comment 4

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

Deferring this bug to Fenix post-MVP because the offline mode user story is in Fenix's Post-MVP Backlog: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/1182

Comment 5

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

Setting [geckoview:fenix:m8] because the Fenix team wants offline mode for Q4.

Comment 6

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

I'm editing a bunch of GeckoView bugs. If you'd like to filter all this bugmail, search and destroy emails containing this UUID:

e88a5094-0fc0-4b7c-b7c5-aef00a11dbc9

Comment 7

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

Waiting for more details from Vesta about how this Save Page Offline feature should work. Is the Fenix feature about taking a full page screenshot, saving a page's HTML and assets to a local file, or enabling Gecko's existing offline browsing mode (where Gecko will load files from the browser cache instead of from the network)?

https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/219#issuecomment-526381207

Deferring from M8 to M9 backlog until we get more details.

Comment 8

[Chenxia Liu [:liuche]]

Hey Chris, we discussed this in backlog grooming, and we'd like to do:
"enabling Gecko's existing offline browsing mode (where Gecko will load files from the browser cache instead of from the network)"

This wouldn't need to persist through refresh or navigating away/back (unless that is free).

We're thinking about this for Q1, but let us know if you need further priority context.

Comment 9

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

We're thinking about this for Q1, but let us know if you need further priority context.

OK. Tagging this bug to be considered for GV's December or January sprint.

Comment 10

[Andreas Bovens [:abovens]]

I'd like to better understand how this will work in practice. Will the browser automatically switch between online/offline mode depending on network availability, or will user interaction (to toggle between these states) be required?

Comment 11

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

Tasks and enhancements should have severity N/A.