676029 - Need module to create non-browser windows

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Add-on SDK Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[Christoph Dorn]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; rv:2.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0.1
Build ID: 20110413222027

Steps to reproduce:

I wish to open a window that will persist its own position and sizing.


Actual results:

Using the `WINDOWS` module will only create browser windows (windowtype="navigator:browser") that if moved or resized affect the position and size of the browser windows after restart.


Expected results:

I need a way to create a window that is not of windowtype="navigator:browser".

Comment 1

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

You can create arbitrary windows using the very-low-level nsIWindowWatcher XPCOM interface.  To access the interface, do the following:

  const { Cc, Ci } = require("chrome");
  let ww = Cc["@mozilla.org/embedcomp/window-watcher;1"].
           getService(Ci.nsIWindowWatcher);

Then use the interface's openWindow method <http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/embedding/components/windowwatcher/public/nsIWindowWatcher.idl#101> to open the window.  See various openWindow calls in the core packages for examples, including one in run-tests.js <https://github.com/mozilla/addon-sdk/blob/master/packages/test-harness/lib/run-tests.js#L45>.

Comment 2

[Christoph Dorn]

Will page-mods still work with this window? If not how can we get them working?

Comment 3

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

I think page-mods will work with a browser or iframe element inside a custom chrome window, but I'm not sure.  cc:ing Alex, who might know.

Comment 4

[Alexandre Poirot [:ochameau]]

page-mod use "content-document-global-created" event, so only "content" documents are going to be matched by page-mods.
So all documents inside a <browser type="content" /> are going to work.
And it may work with your main window document, if you omit "chrome" from windows feature while calling nsIWindowWatcher.openWindow.