1836441 - Accessing extension settings is too hard

Status: ASSIGNED

(Toolkit :: Add-ons Manager, enhancement, P3)

Description

[mprops]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/114.0

Steps to reproduce:

To get to an extension's Preferences, you must first right click the icon, then click "manage", then click the small and confusing "..." button. Then select preferences.
This is too hard.

Same with changing the extensions shortcuts. The menu is hidden behind the cog wheel and it's hard to find.

Expected results:

I think these should be exposed much more.

Comment 1

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

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'WebExtensions::Untriaged' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

[Rob Wu [:robwu]]

By default, the settings of an extension are very visible under the "Preferences" tab, between "Details" and "Permissions". Clicking on that reveals the extension settings within the about:addons UI

An extension can opt out of that by setting options_ui.open_in_tab to true (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/manifest.json/options_ui). With this option set, the preferences open in a new browser tab instead of in the about:addons UI.

I can imagine user confusion over this inconsistency in where the entry point to extension settings is rendered. A way to solve this is to unconditionally render the "Preferences" tab, and when open_in_tab is set by the extension, render a button or link to open the actual extension settings in a new tab. E.g. a button with the label [Open settings page for this extension]

Comment 3

[mprops]

Why not include Preferences in the extension icon's right click menu?

Also, why not show a filtered Keyboard Shortcuts window as well.
For instance right click an icon, click "Keyboard Shortcuts" and it opens the shortcut's manager but filtered to show the specific extension...

Comment 4

[Rob Wu [:robwu]]

(In reply to mprops from comment #3)

Why not include Preferences in the extension icon's right click menu?

There is only that much space. We cannot add a menu item for every feature. Users who want to can access the Preferences in most cases through the "Manage Extension" option, which includes not the extension's own specific Preferences, but also permission controls and such.
If an extension really wants to have another Preferences option there, they can use the menus / contextMenus API to add their own custom menu item.

Also, why not show a filtered Keyboard Shortcuts window as well.
For instance right click an icon, click "Keyboard Shortcuts" and it opens the shortcut's manager but filtered to show the specific extension...

Sounds reasonable to me. I would only scroll to it instead of hiding all others, so that it is obvious why a shortcut isn't available.

Side note, there is another feature request to improve the visibility of extension shortcuts, at bug 1704303.