1962850 - Panorama View addon broke due to new tabGroups API

Status: RESOLVED MOVED

(WebExtensions :: Developer Outreach, defect)

Description

[dolphinling]

The Panorama View addon (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/panorama-view/) stopped working in nightly 2025-04-25-21-24-24.

It now shows a blank screen instead of the expected extension content and has an error in the console:
Uncaught (in promise) TypeError: can't access property "query", browser.tabGroups is undefined

It worked in version 2025-04-25-09-15-26, and fails in version 2025-04-25-21-24-24.

Within that range, the most likely culprit is bug 1961539 (though it could be one of the followups committed at the same time).

Steps to reproduce:

1. New firefox profile on nightly 2025-04-25-09-15-26
2. Install Panorama View
3. Test it, see that opening the extension shows an overview of tabs
4. Update firefox to 2025-04-25-21-24-24 or later
5. Test it, extension now shows a blank page with an error in the console

Comment 1

[Rob Wu [:robwu]]

The extension contains a polyfill for the tabGroups API that looks like this:

if (!browser.hasOwnProperty('tabGroups')) {

... but does not request the tabGroups permission. So even though the browser has a tabGroups API, the extension cannot use it because it lacks the permission.

The extension author should update the extension and add the tabGroups permission.

Comment 2

[Rob Wu [:robwu]]

I reported the issue to the extension author at https://github.com/photodiode/panorama-view/issues/167