1800883 - Consider hiding "some" extensions in the unified extensions panel

Status: ASSIGNED

(WebExtensions :: General, enhancement, P3)

Description

[William Durand [:willdurand]]

Currently, the list of extensions in the unified extensions panel is the same as the list of extensions in about:addons. Some* extensions like search engines might not need to be listed in the unified extensions panel because that might not provide any value added to end users.

* = we still need to figure out which add-ons we could omit in the panel, search engines come to mind but that's just an idea for now.

Comment 1

[Shane Caraveo (:mixedpuppy)]

An idea we discussed was adding a hide menu to the cog button. If any are hidden, then another "unhide" menu item shows up at the bottom of the panel. This allows a user to hide addons in the list. Lets pass the idea by Julian.

Comment 2

[Tomislav Jovanovic :zombie]

We can easily filter out extensions which we know for sure can't ever access any website, and don't have an action button to be clicked.

A scoped down solution with minimal UI requirement could be to hide those extensions described above, and if any are hidden, add a line "N extensions not shown" right above the [Manage extensions] button, implying to the user "click the button below to see them all in about:addons".

Comment 3

[William Durand [:willdurand]]

FWIW it'd be good to keep Bug 1800881 in mind because that might incur some complications.

Comment 4

[Juliana Gaibler [:juliana]]

Attachment: hidden-extensions-quick-sketch.png

Hi!
Yeah, I've already seen some feedback on the blog and on the feedback site from users (that have a lot of extensions) wanting to hide extensions or re-order them.

Re automatic hiding: I wonder if users have an expectation that all extensions are shown in this new menu. If most users really only have a couple installed, I don't see the harm in also showing the ones that could potentially be hidden.

Re manual hiding: That might really make sense for users with a lot of extensions. I Attached a rough idea of what we could do. We can talk more about it next year ^^. Whatever we do, I guess we'd still want to show an indicator that the hidden extensions request permissions.

Comment 5

[arbitrarytrajectory]

Re: manual hiding, I have several extensions that are only relevant on specific sites. Besides the ability to hide extensions on all sites, an option to hide extensions only on sites they can't access would be very handy.

Comment 6

[William Durand [:willdurand]]

Attachment: Bug 1800883 - Only show non-CUI extensions that need attention in the panel. r?zombie!

Instead of trying to determine which non-CUI extensions are worth
surfacing, we can probably only display those that need attention.
That should avoid complicated filtering logic.

Comment 7

[Jon S]

Also requested on Connect here: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/unified-extension-menu-hide-addons-from-menu/idi-p/26936