Open Bug 1674252 Opened 4 years ago Updated 3 years ago

Don't hide pref browser.pagethumbnails.capturing_disabled

Categories

(Firefox :: New Tab Page, defect, P4)

Product:
Firefox
Component:
New Tab Page
Type:
defect

Tracking

()

Status:
UNCONFIRMED

People

(Reporter: robin.a.meade, Unassigned, NeedInfo)

References

(Blocks 1 open bug)

Details

The pref browser.pagethumbnails.capturing_disabled should be unhidden because there are reasons for not wanting thumbnails generated that go beyond test purposes.

A web search for this preference will show many discussions by end users wishing to disable thumbnails on their New Tab page.

On my New Tab page, I only want the automatically detected high resolution favicon images or Custom Image Urls that I specify. Never captured thumbnails.

To accomplish this goal, I discovered the browser.pagethumbnails.capturing_disabled which I set to True.

However, now all my Custom Image Urls that I specified stopped working. This is bug 1551132. But that bug won't be fixed because pref browser.pagethumbnails.capturing_disabled is hidden and, therefore, thought to be only for testing purposes.

Priority: -- → P4

This pref should be exposed as a setting for multiple reasons.

  1. Firefox is marketed as a privacy-focused browser yet it automatically captures screenshots of the pages you visit and stores them unprotected without any warning. Exposing this pref allows users to know the browser is capturing screenshots and disable it.

  2. Users may wish to use the Home page similarly to a launcher or mobile home screen or the grid on the Windows Start Menu, and only use high resolution icons or supply their own custom images as with bug 1551132. Screenshots are out of place in this scenario.

I assume the original purpose of storing the thumbnails was to display on the new tab page to make the icons identifiable without relying on 16x16 favicons. I suggest this is no longer relevant in today's web environment where many sites have manifests or define high resolution icon meta tags to identify the website.

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:thecount, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Flags: needinfo?(sdowne)
Blocks: 1445085
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