1814871 - Add-on button in toolbar opens about:addons rather than opening the unified extensions popup when used in permanent private browsing mode (and without add-ons with permissions to be used in private browsing)

Status: NEW

(WebExtensions :: General, enhancement, P3)

Description

[TOURCODER]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/109.0

Steps to reproduce:

1. Click 'jigsaw puzzle' icon on the toolbar
2. it will open a tab about:addons

Actual results:

open a tab about:addons

Expected results:

A pop-up window called extension appears.

Get more information, please check this link
https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/add-ons-arent-displayed-on-toolbar/110670

Comment 1

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Not an exploitable security issue.

Reporter: In about:config, what is the value of extensions.unifiedExtensions.enabled ?

Comment 2

[Alex Cornestean]

Hello,

I could not reproduce the issue on the latest Nightly (111.0a1/20230205211244), Beta (110.0b9/20230202190127), nor Release (109.0.1/20230127170202) under Windows 10 x64 and macOS 11.3.1.

I installed several extensions (mostly the ones seen at https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/add-ons-arent-displayed-on-toolbar/110670/2) and clicked the Unified Extensions button.
The Unified Extensions panel opens without issues and it lists all the extensions I installed previously. It does not open about:addons in a tab, which would have been the expected behavior of the button when no extensions are installed at all.

Comment 3

[Alex Cornestean]

Attachment: 2023-02-06_09h50_10.png

Comment 4

[TOURCODER]

(In reply to :Gijs (he/him) from comment #1)

Not an exploitable security issue.

Reporter: In about:config, what is the value of extensions.unifiedExtensions.enabled ?

The value is true.

Comment 5

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Are there any errors appearing in the browser console when you click the extensions item? (open with cmd-shift-j - this is different from the "regular" devtools console)

Comment 6

[TOURCODER]

(In reply to Alex Cornestean from comment #2)

Hello,

I could not reproduce the issue on the latest Nightly (111.0a1/20230205211244), Beta (110.0b9/20230202190127), nor Release (109.0.1/20230127170202) under Windows 10 x64 and macOS 11.3.1.

I installed several extensions (mostly the ones seen at https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/add-ons-arent-displayed-on-toolbar/110670/2) and clicked the Unified Extensions button.
The Unified Extensions panel opens without issues and it lists all the extensions I installed previously. It does not open about:addons in a tab, which would have been the expected behavior of the button when no extensions are installed at all.

Maybe you need to watch this.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/18zsRe_HLVO2fCnfV-gTXQiCpY9xjf5kL/view?usp=share_link

Comment 7

[TOURCODER]

(In reply to :Gijs (he/him) from comment #5)

Are there any errors appearing in the browser console when you click the extensions item? (open with cmd-shift-j - this is different from the "regular" devtools console)

Got nothing...

Comment 8

[:Gijs (he/him)]

I'm confused why this was moved to "enhancement" from "defect" with no comments. Do we understand why about:addons opens here instead of showing all the extensions the user has installed? (please check the video linked in comment 6)

Comment 9

[William Durand [:willdurand]]

Reporter: can you make the bookmarks toolbar visible? I am wondering if the extensions are pinned there...

Comment 10

[Shane Hughes [:aminomancer]]

Hey, I'm able to reproduce the issue on Nightly 111. It doesn't happen if you have any add-ons installed that have browser actions that would show up in unified extensions. Idk which types of browser actions are not added to the list. But I'm noticing that with only Notes by Firefox installed and placed in the customize menu, the bug appears, and adding Dark Reader, the bug disappears.

Oh, and there are no errors or any other useful info in the console. It seems like it would be expected behavior when there's nothing to show in the unified extensions list. So I guess the question is, which addons do you have installed? And on the engineering side, which parameters matter in determining if an add-on is displayed in unified extensions list? Should Notes by Firefox be in there? (I think there might be an enhancement to show all browser actions in that list, but I just mean given current expectations)

Comment 11

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to Shane Hughes [:aminomancer] from comment #10)

So I guess the question is, which addons do you have installed?

This is visible in the video in comment 6.

Comment 12

[Rob Wu [:robwu]]

(In reply to :Gijs (he/him) from comment #8)

I'm confused why this was moved to "enhancement" from "defect" with no comments. Do we understand why about:addons opens here instead of showing all the extensions the user has installed? (please check the video linked in comment 6)

The panel does not show all installed extensions, but only the active (non-disabled) ones (source). When there are none, the implementation explicitly decides to open about:addons instead of showing the panel (source). This was implemented in bug 1780782 as a follow-up to bug 1778684.

We marked it as an "enhancement" instead of "defect" because this is not really a bug. The "enhancement" here is to potentially change the behavior to something more inituitive.

Comment 13

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to Rob Wu [:robwu] from comment #12)

(In reply to :Gijs (he/him) from comment #8)

I'm confused why this was moved to "enhancement" from "defect" with no comments. Do we understand why about:addons opens here instead of showing all the extensions the user has installed? (please check the video linked in comment 6)

The panel does not show all installed extensions, but only the active (non-disabled) ones (source). When there are none, the implementation explicitly decides to open about:addons instead of showing the panel (source). This was implemented in bug 1780782 as a follow-up to bug 1778684.

Sure, I'm aware of this, but there are at least 8 enabled add-ons visible in about:addons in the video.

Comment 14

[Rob Wu [:robwu]]

None of the extensions in the video have the "Can access private windows" badge.

While the video does not feature a window with a purple private browsing icon, it is still possible for the window to be in private browsing mode when permanent private browsing mode is enabled, through the "Never remember history" setting at about:preferences : https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/private-browsing-use-firefox-without-history#w_can-i-set-firefox-to-always-use-private-browsing

If this is the case, then the user can enable the extension and its visibility in the panel via the extension settings as documented at: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/extensions-private-browsing

Comment 15

[TOURCODER]

(In reply to William Durand [:willdurand] from comment #9)

Reporter: can you make the bookmarks toolbar visible? I am wondering if the extensions are pinned there...

No, the extensions are not pinned on the bookmarks toolbar.

Comment 16

[TOURCODER]

(In reply to Rob Wu [:robwu] from comment #14)

None of the extensions in the video have the "Can access private windows" badge.

While the video does not feature a window with a purple private browsing icon, it is still possible for the window to be in private browsing mode when permanent private browsing mode is enabled, through the "Never remember history" setting at about:preferences : https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/private-browsing-use-firefox-without-history#w_can-i-set-firefox-to-always-use-private-browsing

If this is the case, then the user can enable the extension and its visibility in the panel via the extension settings as documented at: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/extensions-private-browsing

Solved, my browser is in privacy mode, and I forget when I set it to private mode.

It is recommended to highlight the privacy mode switched to via settings.

Comment 17

[William Durand [:willdurand]]

We agree that this is confusing and we want to fix this bug, but that will require UX.

Also, some of our internals might be annoying: for example, in permanent private browsing mode, we do not load the add-ons, which would be required to create CUI widgets to list all the extensions (including those not allowed to run in PB). This would be slightly different in a new PB window.

Comment 18

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

Without creating the widgets you're trying to avoid creating, does the panel code know the difference between "zero addons enabled (at all)" and "some addons enabled, but none in private mode"? If so you could keep the current behavior for the former, and for the latter you could show the panel with an empty list and text something like "No extensions enabled in private browsing". With, of course, the "Manage extensions" button still present at the bottom.

If you don't know the distinction between "none" and "none enabled" you still know when a window is in private mode so you could show a panel like that regardless just for clarity. Sorry for kibitzing, but I'm sympathetic to people who don't realize the "Never remember history" setting is internally the same as private browsing—it's not obvious that setting does more than just "erase cookies and history when I'm done".

Comment 19

[William Durand [:willdurand]]

I agree we should have some kind of message, even when some extensions are enabled in PB mode, this is confusing. There is an example: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1823561#c19