1562657 - Implement discovery of search extensions

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: Search, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Dale Harvey (:daleharvey)]

Allow users to add new one off search engines by pointing to a web extension in a mechanism much in the same way they can currently do with opensearch

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/OpenSearch#Autodiscovery_of_search_plugins

<link rel="search"
type="application/x-xpinstall"
title="searchTitle"
href="extensionURL">

Comment 1

[Dale Harvey (:daleharvey)]

Attachment: Bug 1572030 - Add support for experiments in modernConfig

Comment 2

[Phabricator Automation]

Comment on attachment 9089861 [details]
Bug 1572030 - Add support for experiments in modernConfig

Revision D44376 was moved to bug 1572030. Setting attachment 9089861 [details] to obsolete.

Comment 3

[Mike de Boer [:mikedeboer]]

Demo video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1satwSs4nNIGhSNbhCmH6s4NRE-D5TQLy/view?usp=sharing

Comment 4

[Mike de Boer [:mikedeboer]]

Attachment: Bug 1562657 - Implement discovery of search engine WebExtensions by adding support for the appropriate <link> tag. r?Standard8!,mixedpuppy!

See tooManyEnginesOffered.html for an example link element syntax. This is the
same feature as we currently support for OpenSearch plugins; to allow a website
to promote and expose their search engine to be installed by the user.
I'm using the installAddonFromWebpage API, because we want the same
restrictions to be in place as regular WebExtensions. Therefore, when you
attempt to install a locally hosted XPI, the download will fill and a doorhanger
will tell you it did.
For now the WebExtension engines will be mixed together with the OpenSearch ones,
but in the future this may be different.
Note that I'm using the 'application/x-xpinstall' mime-type here, but this can
be changed to a new 'application/x-webext[ension]' one, if that would allow for
better interoperability with other browsers. Yes, this would be a
pseudo-mime-type.

Comment 5

[Shane Caraveo (:mixedpuppy)]

(In reply to Mike de Boer [:mikedeboer] from comment #4)

Created attachment 9108674 [details]
Bug 1562657 - Implement discovery of search engine WebExtensions by adding support for the appropriate <link> tag. r?Standard8!,rhelmer!

For now the WebExtension engines will be mixed together with the OpenSearch ones,
but in the future this may be different.

What does that mean?

Comment 6

[Shane Caraveo (:mixedpuppy)]

(In reply to Shane Caraveo (:mixedpuppy) from comment #5)

What does that mean?

I think I answered my own question.

Comment 7

[Mike de Boer [:mikedeboer]]

Attachment: Bug 1562657 - Add unit test coverage for WebExtension search engine discovery. r?Standard8!

Depends on D52995

Comment 8

[Dale Harvey (:daleharvey)]

This was a consideration when we were considering removing opensearch, less so now