1827034 - Unified extension menu button is present in popup window's toolbar, occupying precious space & having no entries (or nearly no entries)

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(WebExtensions :: General, defect, P3)

Description

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Attachment: testcase 1: a button that spawns a popup when clicked

STR:

1. Load attached testcase.
2. Click the button (to open a popup viewing https://example.org )
3. Look at the toolbar on the popup window.

ACTUAL RESULTS:
The popup window's toolbar has the unified extension-menu button.

EXPECTED RESULTS:
No unified extension-menu button should be shown in the popup window's toolbar.

A few additional supporting points for why we shouldn't show this button:

• I could imagine there being a case for this button to be present if it was a way for users to e.g. activate content-modifying extensions (Stylus, uBlock Origin, etc.). However, those extensions are not listed in this menu at all in popup windows (despite showing up in the menu for a regular window). [edit: see comment 3 for more on this]
• Space is typically quite-constrained in popup-windows, to the point that we don't even show a "back" button or a "reload" button. It's unlikely we want to reserve space for this extension menu if we aren't reserving space for a back button.
• I ran into a real-world example where we've simply run out of space in the toolbar of a popup window, and removing this button would address that case. (See bug 1827031; I'm marking it as a dependency since I'm guessing that we might fix that one by fixing this bug here.)

Comment 1

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Attachment: screencast showing this menu button being present, w/ empty menu, in popup window (vs. nonempty in regular window)

Comment 2

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

willdurand, perhaps you could take a look or have thoughts here?

Comment 3

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

note: in my screencast taken in a fresh profile with uBlock Origin + Stylus installed, there are zero extensions shown in the popup's unified extension menu.

Some extensions do show up there if I install them, though, which is why I mention "no entries (or nearly no entries)" in the bug summary here. But these extensions happen to be ones that aren't particularly useful to expose UI for on the popup window.

e.g. if I install https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/about-sync/ , that one does show up in the menu when I perform this bug's STR.

I think maybe (?) the popup window's unified-extension-menu only includes extensions that we flag as "can't read or change data on this site"? At least, that's what it seems like in my regular browsing profile. (This seems exactly-backward, the user can't do anything to the popup with these extensions, so there's no real point in surfacing them.)

Comment 4

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Also, just for comparison, Chrome (v113 dev on Linux) gives EXPECTED RESULTS here.

(I installed their version of the Stylus add-on, which gives me a unified-extension-menu in the toolbar. Popup windows e.g. spawned by my attached testcase don't include that extension menu-button in the toolbar, or in fact any toolbar-buttons at all; they just show the URLbar and nothing else.)

Comment 5

[William Durand [:willdurand]]

(In reply to Daniel Holbert [:dholbert] from comment #2)

willdurand, perhaps you could take a look or have thoughts here?

I agree we shouldn't show the extensions button in this case, based on what you've mentioned in Comment 0, specifically:

Space is typically quite-constrained in popup-windows, to the point that we don't even show a "back" button or a "reload" button. It's unlikely we want to reserve space for this extension menu if we aren't reserving space for a back button.

Comment 6

[William Durand [:willdurand]]

Attachment: Bug 1827034 - Hide extensions button in popup windows. r#desktop-reviewers!

Comment 7

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/d4fc5208b815
Hide extensions button in popup windows. r#desktop-reviewers! r=dao

Comment 8

[Narcis Beleuzu [:NarcisB]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/d4fc5208b815