1893319 - Add preferences to allow synced devices to have "fake" tabs.

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Application Services :: Sync, enhancement)

Description

[Mark Hammond [:markh] [:mhammond]]

Attachment: An example of fake "active" tabs - fake "inactive" tabs are similar but include "Inactive" in the title.

I've been working with Amy on UX for some of the new tab work going on, and realized it's very difficult in the general case to test Synced Tabs when there are many tabs and/or inactive tabs - you currently need to go to another device, open may tabs, open their "secret debug" menu to trick that other device into thinking some of the tabs are inactive, etc. As a result, it's very rare for our UX or QA people to observe how Synced Tabs look in these cases.

So I'm putting up a relatively simple patch which will allow a couple of prefs to be set, which would then add a number of "fake tabs" to each device. Each tab is clearly and obviously fake, and this pref would not have a default value, meaning it's unlikely users would stumble on it.

I realize this is slightly unusual and would not be too surprised at some pushback, but it has the full support of Amy so thought I'd throw it at the wall and see if it sticks.

Comment 1

[Mark Hammond [:markh] [:mhammond]]

Attachment: Bug 1893319 - Allow preferences to be created which will create "fake" synced tabs for all devices. r?Gijs,sclements

Comment 2

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/a92481411f5e
Allow preferences to be created which will create "fake" synced tabs for all devices. r=Gijs

Comment 3

[Cosmin Sabou [:CosminS]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/a92481411f5e

Comment 4

[Acasandrei Beatrice (needinfo me)]

(In reply to Pulsebot from comment #2)

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/a92481411f5e
Allow preferences to be created which will create "fake" synced tabs for all
devices. r=Gijs

Perfherder has detected a talos performance change from push a92481411f5ede16b361b88abdb69d0bc13585f7.

Improvements:

Ratio	Test	Platform	Options	Absolute values (old vs new)
5%	pdfpaint issue4890.pdf	linux1804-64-shippable-qr	e10s fission stylo webrender	720.35 -> 685.41
4%	pdfpaint issue4890.pdf	linux1804-64-shippable-qr	e10s fission stylo webrender	705.44 -> 675.89

Details of the alert can be found in the alert summary, including links to graphs and comparisons for each of the affected tests.

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You can run these tests on try with ./mach try perf --alert 141

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Comment 5

[:Gijs (he/him)]

comment 4 looks to be misattributed; this change has nothing to do with PDFs, painting or layout.