1778684 - Adjust extension button's behavior when there is no active extension

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(WebExtensions :: General, enhancement, P3)

Description

[William Durand [:willdurand]]

The new extension button introduced in Bug 1777481 should be hidden when there is no visible extension. In order to fully fix this bug, we should listen to some events to know when an extension is added/disabled/removed to make sure the button is only visible when there are visible extensions AND hide this button when there is no visible extension anymore (e.g., the user had only 1 extension enabled and removed it).

Comment 1

[William Durand [:willdurand]]

According to the last UX meeting notes:

DECISION: Should behave like the download button.

• You can right-click the download button and it has a “hide when empty” option
• It stays in the toolbar (keeps its place), but is not visible
• To get it back, you go into customize mode and right click again
• Clicking the Extension button when there are no extensions doesn’t show the panel but instead opens a about:addons tab with recommended extensions

Comment 2

[Luca Greco [:rpl] [:luca] [:lgreco]]

while discussing about this bug a few days ago, William and I were wondering if we should also take into account that (if we plan to anchor on the unified extensions button the install flows doorhangers) the unified extension button may also have to become visible when no extension is currently active but there are some in the process of being installed.

Comment 3

[William Durand [:willdurand]]

I filed Bug 1781773 for allowing the widget to be customizable, which is kinda related to this bug.

Comment 5

[08xjcec48]

See also: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/hide-the-unified-extensions-button-when-empty/idi-p/23287

Comment 6

[Tomislav Jovanovic :zombie]

Small update, we are considering hiding the extension button if user has not installed any extensions.

Comment 8

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

This is important in enterprise uses cases as well. For kiosks, locked down machines, etc. with no addons, the button is superfluous.

Comment 9

[Rob Wu [:robwu]]

(In reply to Mike Kaply [:mkaply] from comment #8)

This is important in enterprise uses cases as well. For kiosks, locked down machines, etc. with no addons, the button is superfluous.

The ability to hide the extensions button was enabled in bug 1964857.
Enterprise policies can set extensions.unifiedExtensions.button.always_visible to false to hide the button by default (which ought work ecause the extensions. prefix is permitted here).

What remains here is the default behavior, when no extensions are installed. Currently about:addons is opened when the button is clicked (and when the Extensions Button is hidden, about:addons is opened instead of the panel being shown when the "Extensions and themes" appmenu item is clicked).

What we are going to do is to show some default content that tells the user why no extensions are displayed, where we distinguish between the following cases:

• No extensions installed at all. We distinguish at least between no extensions installed vs extensions installed but disabled (bug 1778684, this bug).
  • Figma: https://www.figma.com/design/RCr1Q1wIUolwKyi11e1pOR/Extension-button?node-id=2910-1389
• The window is a private browsing window and none of the extensions have private browsing access (bug 1814871).
  • Figma: https://www.figma.com/design/RCr1Q1wIUolwKyi11e1pOR/Extension-button?node-id=8427-20953

These mocks are part of the PRD at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Cj_VLH4yGAO7AJh2gUbOLXZVG57Yjpw29RryN_03wp0/edit

From the implementation point of view, I'll start with the last one (bug 1814871) because it would be confusing to show the generic "no extensions installed UI" when the user did in fact do so, but is just in private browsing mode.

Comment 10

[Henry Wilkes (they/them) [:henry-x]]

Attachment: Tor Browser patch: hide empty unified extension

@robwu

In the context of Tor Browser we discourage user's from installing their own extensions and we hide the NoScript extension toolbar button by default. So we added a patch that hides the unified extensions button when the extensions panel would be empty, should it be opened. I.e. if the user has no extensions installed, or all their extensions are in the toolbar, we hide the unified extensions toolbar button *and* the "Extensions" menu item.

We re-show the unified extensions toolbar as necessary. E.g. when an extensions toolbar would overflow.

I've attached the patch we apply (minus our special NoScript logic). Since our patch is implemented in a way to avoid conflicts coming from mozilla-central, it is probably not how you would implement it yourselves. But I think you might want to use the same logic.

Comment 11

[Rob Wu [:robwu]]

Attachment: Bug 1778684 - Add info in empty panel when there is a disabled extension

Comment 12

[Rob Wu [:robwu]]

Attachment: Bug 1778684 - Add test coverage for blocklisted addon

When bug 1917848 introduced the blocklist messages in the extensions
panel, it added logic to customize the about:addons page that would be
opened if there are no extensions in the panel. It did not include unit
tests for this scenario.

The previous commit in this bug (bug 1778684) defaults to showing the
panel when extensions are disabled, with some explanatory UI. Because
blocklisted add-ons are disabled, this also implies that the
shouldShowBlocklistAttention check in browser-addons.js is now obsolete.
This patch removes that check as a cleanup.

Comment 13

[Rob Wu [:robwu]]

Attachment: Bug 1778684 - Show discover button in panel when there are no extensions

Comment 14

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://github.com/mozilla-firefox/firefox/commit/40facf4946ea
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/9a23c570cdad
Add info in empty panel when there is a disabled extension r=rpl,fluent-reviewers,bolsson
https://github.com/mozilla-firefox/firefox/commit/a748e9d61e04
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/df293fdfa6ae
Add test coverage for blocklisted addon r=rpl
https://github.com/mozilla-firefox/firefox/commit/992283dcd23e
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/22644b722c56
Show discover button in panel when there are no extensions r=rpl,fluent-reviewers,desktop-theme-reviewers,bolsson,emilio,dao

Comment 15

[Narcis Beleuzu [:NarcisB]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/9a23c570cdad
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/df293fdfa6ae
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/22644b722c56

Comment 16

[Alan Byrne [:abyrne]]

Release Note Request (optional, but appreciated)
[Why is this notable]: Change in behaviour when a user clicks the Extensions toolbar button
[Affects Firefox for Android]: No
[Suggested wording]: When a Firefox user has no extensions installed, and clicks the Extensions button on the toolbar, they will now see a message explaining how extensions can elevate their browsing experience with links to the Firefox add-ons store.
[Links (documentation, blog post, etc)]:

Comment 17

[Pascal Chevrel:pascalc]

Note added to our 145 beta release notes as well as our draft for our 145 final release notes. I am keeping the relnote flag open until we have shipped the note with 145.0. Thanks.

Comment 18

[Pascal Chevrel:pascalc]

Added to our final 145 release notes.