1638484 - About:config context menus gone

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Toolkit :: Preferences, defect, P3)

Description

[Jerry Baker]

About:config used to have handy context menus that would allow me to copy the key name or change the value and it gave me clues about what type of values were expected. With FF 76.0.1 I no longer have those context menus and instead the default context menu appears. Copying the pref value is a pain because you can't use the standard double-click to select the whole word because double-click toggles the value or opens it for editing.

Comment 1

[Jerry Baker]

Attachment: Former handy context menu

Comment 2

[:Gijs (out for now; he/him)]

Paolo, the copying issue is something I've run into myself. about:config can provide its own html context menu additions to make this easier. Could we consider adding those, given that there is no UI to do that right now, and drag-to-select is much more clumsy and difficult than the 2 clicks we had before?

Comment 3

[:Paolo Amadini]

For me, it's a matter of how often these operations are needed, balanced with the added code complexity and the need for more automated tests. Every addition is a potential future cost - such as if we'll need to move the page out of the parent process, or refactor the tests to be faster and enable them on debug builds.

If it was up to me I'd say that we don't need more complexity just for this convenience, but I'm actually redirecting the request to Jared since he's effectively the active maintainer of this code now and more up to date than me, and can probably make a call as needed.

Comment 4

[:Paolo Amadini]

See also bug 1581298, that I would probably consider WONTFIX now for the same complexity reasons, and is about using triple click to facilitate the copy and paste of the name.

Comment 5

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

Thanks Paolo, however I agree with Gijs and have found that I miss the old copy context menu options. We can use the <menu> element to add to the page's existing context menu and shouldn't have to worry about moving this breaking if/when this is moved out of the parent process.

Comment 6

[gliu20]

Hey there! I'm considering taking on this issue, but unfortunately, as far as I'm aware, it seems the specs have changed from what it was a couple years ago and that adding to the native menus created by the browser is deprecated: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Global_attributes/contextmenu

If we were to go with the <menu> element solution as proposed, then I'd imagine we'd have to recreate the context menu in HTML (but if I'm not mistaken the context menu is already HTML)?

Another approach might be to add a case for about:config just as its done for about:devtools-toolbox in ContextMenuChild.jsm [1] and nsContextMenu.jsm [2]. My understanding is that the about:devtools-toolbox special case allows devtools to have a special context menu for css rules, though I may be wrong as I haven't reasoned through the code fully yet [3].

Any thoughts on taking this approach?

References:
[1] https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/actors/ContextMenuChild.jsm#926
[2] https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/search?q=inAboutDevtoolsToolbox&path=&case=false&regexp=false
[3] https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/devtools/client/inspector/changes/ChangesContextMenu.js

Comment 7

[gliu20]

Attachment: Screenshot from 2022-03-17 00-10-23.png

I've added a screenshot of what I mean by the devtools copy css rule context menu

Comment 8

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

Hi Gliu20, thanks for your interest in this bug. Now that we've been living with this for ~2 years, I know it is less of an issue to me now. I would suggest looking through the list of bugs for about:preferences to see one that you might want to fix instead, https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?component=Preferences&limit=0&list_id=16028701&product=Firefox&query_format=advanced&resolution=---&order=priority%20DESC%2Cbug_status%2Cassigned_to%2Cbug_id&query_based_on=

I now agree with Paolo in that the added code complexity most likely isn't worth it. As such, I'm going to close this bug as wontfix.

Comment 9

[Jerry Baker]

So for the 21 years leading up to this bug, it wasn't too complex to have this code. Can someone explain what changed to make it too complex for the Mozilla team to keep in the codebase?

Comment 10

[:Gijs (out for now; he/him)]

(In reply to Jerry Baker from comment #9)

So for the 21 years leading up to this bug, it wasn't too complex to have this code. Can someone explain what changed to make it too complex for the Mozilla team to keep in the codebase?

We changed the technology stack underlying the page from XUL to HTML. The former has support for completely arbitrary context menu, HTML doesn't. You can custom-build something that overrides the native context menu (see e.g. youtube) but that's sort of user hostile (removes useful entries like cut/copy/paste, devtools, etc.), always looks crummy / out of place, and is a lot of work, which in this case provides very limited benefits.