230416 - Mechanism to identify application for extension authors

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(SeaMonkey :: General, enhancement)

Description

[Biju]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5b) Gecko/20030811 Mozilla Firebird/0.6.1+
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5b) Gecko/20030811 Mozilla Firebird/0.6.1+

As extensions like QuickManager can be installed in Moz/Fb/Tb
We need a mechanism for extension developers to identify which is the actual
application running it.

Right now I check value of navigator.vendor
but extensions like Multizilla changes this property
see http://mozdev.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=5382

See discussion
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=29081



Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[Frank Wein [:mcsmurf]]

Hm, also i think this bug is invalid some comment to this. Even if we would
create a new pref, Multizilla could also change this pref, so i think this is
more a Multizilla bug.

Comment 2

[Biju]

> Hm, also i think this bug is invalid some comment to this. 

I agree, it not a bug, but an ISSUE.

ie, We need foolprof Mechanism 

> Even if we would create a new pref, Multizilla could also 
> change this pref, so i think this is more a Multizilla bug.

notified Multizilla team.

Comment 3

[Biju]

bug# 230431 of Firebird is related to this

Comment 4

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

as noted in the Firebird bug, navigator.vendor is inappropriate due to how it is
already used by Netscape, Firebird, and other embeddors.  Breaking the defined
usage of that value by locking it into place isn't the best way of creating a
suitable interface for extension authors.  However, such a mechanism is
certainly needed instead of the various workarounds currently being used.

See http://www.mozilla.org/docs/dom/domref/dom_window_ref50.html for the
specification.

Comment 5

[Biju]

It can be simple as 
for Mozilla
navigator.products ={Gecko:true, Mozilla:true};

for Firebird
navigator.products ={Gecko:true, Firebird:true};

for Thunderbird
navigator.products ={Gecko:true, Thunderbird:true};

for Sunbird
navigator.products ={Gecko:true, Sunbird:true};

and other embeddors can extend it like

navigator.products.MultiZilla = true; 


we should also get similar facility in install.js 

Comment 6

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

confirming.

Comment 7

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

> navigator.products ={Gecko:true, Mozilla:true};

s/Mozilla/SeaMonkey/

Also add a value for "xul apps", so that you can generically check for firefox,
thunderbird and any new apps that may be created, e.g.

navigator.products ={Gecko:true, XULApp: true, Firefox:true};

This should then not be defined for Seamonkey, only apps basing on XRE and the
new toolkit, or however it's called.


The object should be available for XPInstall scripts in XPIs.

Comment 8

[Jens Bannmann]

For toolkit-based apps starting with Fx/Tb 1.1, nsIXULAppInfo serves this purpose:

Components.classes["@mozilla.org/xre/app-info;1"]
 .getService(Components.interfaces.nsIXULAppInfo);

The ID property of the resulting object contains the GUID of the application and
would surely be the safest choice. Of course, you'd need some fallback for
pre-1.1 apps and Seamonkey.

As this was fixed by some other checkin to some other bug, resolving as WFM.