1712556 - Users cannot hide pageAction extension buttons from the address bar

Status: NEW

(WebExtensions :: Frontend, defect, P3)

Description

[Rob Wu [:robwu]]

Before the removal of the meatball menu in the address bar, users could right-click on the extension button and choose "Remove from Address Bar". This hid the button, and the extension button appeared as an entry in the meatball menu instead.

With the removal of the meatball menu (bug 1691454), the menu items to remove the button also disappeared (bug 1704474). Consequently, it is no longer possible for users to hide pageAction menu buttons of extensions. This kind of issue happened before, and caused dissatisfaction among users, see e.g. https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/add-ons-that-can-not-function-without-taking-space-from-the-address-bar-of-firefox/19044

As seen in that thread, users can work around the issue if extensions are updated to support the ability to remove the pageAction button (example). But if extensions do not get this update, then knowledgeable users can still use userChrome.css to hide specific pageAction buttons.

browserAction buttons don't have a remove button, but they can be removed via the "Customize Toolbar" user interface.

Comment 1

[Rob Wu [:robwu]]

bug 1706583 is about this same issue, except from the perspective of the page action / address bar feature.

I filed this new bug to focus on the specific functionality (the inability to remove page action buttons) without prescribing how the functionality can be resolved. A way to re-introduce this functionality without too much maintenance cost for the frontend is to introduce the context menu option again and/or add an option to about:addons to toggle the visibility of the menu.

Our change does not necessarily need to be specific to pageActions, we can consider using the same user-facing toggle (e.g. at about:addons) to control both the pageAction and browserAction options.

Comment 2

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

Set release status flags based on info from the regressing bug 1704474

Comment 3

[Rob Wu [:robwu]]

Linking to bug 1691454 for visibility. I'll reference that other bug in the Firefox 89 release notes for developers. Interested parties can then click on "See also" to discover this bug.

Mentioned in the release notes at https://github.com/mdn/content/pull/5259 as

The "Remove from Address Bar" context menu item has been removed from the pageAction button (bug 1704474). For alternatives to this functionality, see bug 1712556.

Comment 4

[loxia_01]

The functionality to hide the extension buttons in the address bar by right-clicking is now replaced by the functionality to edit and remove the entire extension. The latter functionality appears redundant in the address bar as it already exists at a couple of other places in the browser.
Revert to how it used to be!

Comment 5

[loxia_01]

(In reply to loxia_01 from comment #4)

The functionality to hide the extension buttons in the address bar by right-clicking is now replaced by the functionality to edit and remove the entire extension. The latter functionality appears redundant in the address bar as it already exists at a couple of other places in the browser.
Please revert to how it used to be!