313190 - Add <stack> around browser windows to allow overlaying content

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Vladimir Vukicevic [:vlad] [:vladv] (needinfo me, slow to respond)]

For some extensions, it's highly desirable to be able to overlay content on top
of the current browser window -- whether that is for notifications, for special
effects, or whatnot.  Currently the only way to do overlapping XUL elements is
by using a <stack>; however, there isn't a convenient stack to use in browser.xul.

Comment 1

[Vladimir Vukicevic [:vlad] [:vladv] (needinfo me, slow to respond)]

Attachment: stack-browser.patch

This patch adds a <stack> with an id around the entire browser window content
area.  There don't seem to be any bad effects that I can notice; you can
overlay content on top of the top chrome.  Overlaying content on top of the
browser area itself doesn't quite work, because of bug 191830 -- unless you do
some tricks to force a view for overlaid elements, the browser content area
will paint over everything else.

Comment 2

[Robert O'Callahan (:roc) (email my personal email if necessary)]

Hmm. This shouldn't be working at all, since bug 190115 isn't fixed.

Comment 3

[Vladimir Vukicevic [:vlad] [:vladv] (needinfo me, slow to respond)]

Yeah, I'm not sure if it's 191830 or 190115/130078 that was causing the problems
-- if I stuck a <vbox style="background: black" top="50" left="150" width="50"
height="200"/> in there before the browser vbox, it showed up in the right
place, just clipped by the browser content area.  Ditto for opacity: 0.5 (it was
opaque on top of the rest of the content, just not the content area).

Comment 4

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

Is it possible to have this checked in even though it won't have things working as expected when putting chrome over content?

If checked in now, it would be easier for people to put elements over the non-content part of the browser window, but only after bug 130078 gets fixed would the content part also work.

(Checking it in would make it 1 fewer patches to apply to be able to develop chrome over content extensions on a local trunk build.

Btw, attachment 200272 [details] [diff] [review] has been working well for me, and I haven't noticed any regressions.)

Comment 6

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

(bug 596371 goes a bit further and puts a stack around each individual <browser>, but the idea is the same)

Comment 7

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

Should we keep this bug open to be able to overlay chrome and content at the same time, e.g., for notifications that are anchored in chrome but extend over content?

Comment 8

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

Indeed, this bug addresses different use cases that aren't satisfied by the changes for bug 596371, since that bug is about stacking only the <browser>s inside the <tabbrowser>, while this bug is about stacking the entire content of the browsing window.

Use cases for this bug include dynamic personas that place a content iframe underneath the content of the browsing window.

Comment 9

[Gregory Pappas [:gregp]]

Extensions aren't allowed to modify the browser chrome anymore.