1662098 - The "Set browser as default" notification bar is NOT triggered when navigating from a website to about:newtab/home/welcome

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox :: Messaging System, defect, P1)

Description

[Cosmin Muntean [:cmuntean], Ecosystem QA]

Attachment: website to about page - not trigger the default notification .gif

[Affected versions]:

• Nightly 82.0a1 (Build ID: 20200831091558);
• Beta 81.0b4 (Build ID: 20200829200810);

[Affected Platforms]:

• All Windows;
• All macOS;
• All Linux;

[Prerequisites]:

• Have a new clean Firefox Profile.
• The Firefox browser is NOT set as default.
• The "Restore previous session" feature is enabled.

[Steps to reproduce]:

1. Open the Firefox browser with the profile from prerequisites.
2. Navigate to any website and close the other open tabs.
3. Close the browser.
4. Start the browser.
5. Click the "Home" button.
6. Observe the behavior.

[Expected result]:

• The "about:home" page is loaded and the "Set browser as default" notification bar is displayed.

[Actual result]:

• The "about:home" page is loaded and the "Set browser as default" notification bar is NOT displayed

[Notes]:

• The issue is also reproducible if you manually navigate from a website to "about:newtab", "about:home", or "about:welcome" page. However, if you focus the website then switch back to the "about*" page, the notification will be triggered.
• A similar behavior can be observed in the following scenario: If a new tab is opened but not focused, after the browser is restarted and the opened new tab is focused, the notification is not triggered (see this screen recording).

Comment 1

[Tim Spurway [:tspurway]]

:jaws could you take a look at this one?

Comment 2

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

Attachment: Bug 1662098 - Move default browser notification to JS Window Actor and use pageshow to trigger if the notification will appear.

Comment 3

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

The "default browser notification" feature is targeted for new/non-expert users. New/non-expert users are not going to have restore previous session set, so the primary way they see these pages and the notification is via opening new windows / tabs. Given that, this bug is unlikely to have a large effect on the success of the feature and the changes that we have to make are not reduced in nature and would be difficult to uplift.

Therefore, I am setting the Firefox81 status to fix-optional. Flagging rtestard to put this on your radar.

Comment 4

[Romain Testard [:RT]]

Agreed, about 5% of DAU use session restore so overall impact is small and aligned with what Jared says there is probably a high correlation with existing users as opposed to new users so I'm OK with keeping this as a known issue

Comment 5

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/cf13c1eb4747
Move default browser notification to JS Window Actor and use pageshow to trigger if the notification will appear. r=Gijs

Comment 6

[Alexandru Michis [:malexandru]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/cf13c1eb4747

Comment 7

[Cosmin Muntean [:cmuntean], Ecosystem QA]

I have verified this issue and is no longer reproducible on the latest Nightly 82.0a1 build (Build ID: 20200915092930). I have verified this on Windows 10 x64, macOS 10.15.6, and Ubuntu 20.04 x64.

• The "Set browser as default" notification bar is correctly triggered when navigating from a website to about:newtab/home when having the restore previous session set.

However, there is a case when the notification is not triggered: when navigating from a website to about:welcome page. I don't consider this a bug since this is a very edge case scenario and probably the users will don't manually navigate to about:welcome page.
@Jared, can you please let me know what do you think about this matter?

Comment 8

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

This is because of https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/02cb78667e87ccc42fea5edc6f3f2dd2edd6ecd5/browser/actors/AboutNewTabChild.jsm#40-49. It would be very unlikely that a user visits about:welcome directly so I am not worried about this and don't think a bug should be filed for it.