700805 - Dashboard does not launch when app is installed with the extension

Status: REOPENED

(Web Apps :: Extension, defect, P2)

Description

[Mohamed Dabbagh]

Build identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:8.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/8.0

It seems installing apps with the owa extension behaves differently (not as correctly) as when installing apps without it. For example, when you install an app without having the owa extension, the Dashboard will automatically open in another tab and the app will show there. If you then install another app, the Dashboard will be automatically refreshed and the app will appear there. However, if you install apps with the extension, the Dashboard will not appear when you install an app and will not be updated if you install another app until you refresh the page.

Steps to reproduce:
1. Launch Firefox
2. Install the Open Web Apps extension - Can be found http://people.mozilla.com/~mdabbagh/openwebapps/extension/
3. Go to https://apps.mozillalabs.com/appdir/
4. Install an app 
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 but without having the extension installed (will require a browser restart once you disable/remove the extension)

Actual Results:
The Dashboard is not launched when you install an app with the owa extension and it will not be automatically updated when you install another app.

Expected Results:
The same scenario that occurs when you install apps without the owa extension should occur. The Dashboard should be launched in another tab once you install an app (if it is not already opened in another tab) and should be automatically updated once you install more apps.

Comment 1

[Mohamed Dabbagh]

After re-testing with a newer version of the extension (built from feature/native-app), most of these issues do not occur anymore. The only issue that still remains is when installing apps with the extension, the Dashboard does not automatically get launched in a new tab. For simplicity and for a cleaner/easier to follow bug, Bug 701788 was filed to track this. Closing this one.

Comment 2

[Mohamed Dabbagh]

Need to re-verify this with extension built from 'develop' branch once code is merged there.

Comment 3

[Mohamed Dabbagh]

Still occurs with extension built from 'develop' after the merge. Tested with http://people.mozilla.com/~dclarke/openwebapps/Extension/older/openwebapps-5f90c92fd4-11_23_2011.xpi

Comment 5

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

Yeah, confirming.  Lets show the apps dashboard on install.  We need to keep a consistent target for users to see when applications are installed.  In the future we might change this to something like the Home Tab, but for now we need to work with our dashboard alone and remind users to see where their app was installed.

I have some asks for this, not sure if I should open another bug.  I noticed in the refresh or first opening of the dashboard that we don't specifically call out which app was just installed.  While I don't think users will exactly be confused to which apps was installed they might not see the reason we opened the dashboard.  I'd like to add a short glow animation to the new app such that users can see where the apps was installed in the dashboard.  I can provide a quick mockup in HTML if needed.

Comment 6

[Ian Bicking (:ianbicking)]

At least on the HTML side it is setup to open the dashboard with ?emphasize=app on install, but the dashboard doesn't currently do anything with that.  The emphasis itself is something to be implemented in the dashboard, not the extension, so should probably be another ticket.

Comment 7

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

A Pivotal Tracker story has been created for this Bug: http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/24808689