719921 - Enable add-ons default to compatible on mobile

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect, P4)

Description

[Lawrence Mandel [:lmandel] (use needinfo)]

Firefox 10 desktop will introduce add-ons default to compatible (bug 692664). We should do the same on mobile with the release of the new native UI (Firefox 11) in order to alleviate the pain of updating add-ons on mobile platforms.

In order to enable add-ons default to compatible on mobile, set the following preferences:

1. pref("extensions.strictCompatibility", false); (reference bug 698653)

2. extensions.update.url - add the following parameter to the existing URL "compatMode=%COMPATIBILITY_MODE%"(reference bug 527141)

3. pref("extensions.minCompatibleAppVersion", "11.0"); - Firefox 11 is suggested by Unfocused in order to prevent XUL add-ons from being flagged as compatible (reference bug 700201)

4. extensions.getAddons.search.url - add "%COMPATIBILITY_MODE%" at the end of the URL before the query parameters (reference bug 706387)

Comment 1

[Matt Brubeck (:mbrubeck)]

Attachment: patch

Comment 2

[Wesley Johnston (:wesj)]

Comment on attachment 592922 [details] [diff] [review]
patch

Review of attachment 592922 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Seems good to me.

Comment 3

[Lawrence Mandel [:lmandel] (use needinfo)]

Comment on attachment 592922 [details] [diff] [review]
patch

Android native changes look good. 

For XUL, do we want to enable add-ons compatible by default and open up the round of QA testing that is required to support this change for an existing add-ons ecosystem? (How many add-ons are there on XUL Fennec?) If so, we need to decide on the appropriate minCompabielAppVersion. 4.0 was chosen for desktop as that is when the last really significant breaking changes happened. Does 4.0 make sense for XUL Fennec as well?

Comment 4

[Matt Brubeck (:mbrubeck)]

Oops, pushed this before seeing comment 3:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/c3d1e9d47da3

(In reply to Lawrence Mandel [:lmandel] from comment #3)
> For XUL, do we want to enable add-ons compatible by default and open up the
> round of QA testing that is required to support this change for an existing
> add-ons ecosystem? (How many add-ons are there on XUL Fennec?)

I think it makes sense to turn this on for XUL Fennec.  We don't have automatic compatibility bumps for mobile add-ons, *and* we've stopped making any changes to the XUL Fennec code.  Without compatible-by-default, we are breaking users add-ons and making developers do manual compatibility bumps for basically no reason.

There are about 200 add-ons for XUL Fennec; I believe about 100 are compatible with recent (post-4.0) versions.  Unlike desktop Firefox, we are not aware of any significant "dark matter" (non-AMO) add-ons for Fennec.

> If so, we need to decide on the appropriate minCompabielAppVersion. 4.0
> was chosen for desktop as that is when the last really significant breaking
> changes happened. Does 4.0 make sense for XUL Fennec as well?

Yes, I think that 4.0 is the best choice for XUL Fennec.  Just like desktop Firefox, there were large breaking changes in Fennec 4 but no large breaking changes since then.

Looking at the top 10 add-ons compatible with XUL Fennec on http://addons.mozilla.org/mobile , all of them have maxVersion > 9 or maxVersion < 4.

Looking at all of 18 "featured" mobile add-ons, only one (foursquare) is compatible with 4.0 but not with more recent versions.   Two others are marked compatible with 4.0 but not with the current release version; both are written by Mozilla developers (my own "Quit Fennec" and Brad Lassey's "Helper Apps"), and both were obsoleted because their functionality was uplifted into Fennec itself.

Comment 5

[Lawrence Mandel [:lmandel] (use needinfo)]

Great. As long as enabling add-ons default to compatible on XUL Fennec has been thought out I'm happy to have this feature. Thanks for the details.

Comment 6

[Matt Brubeck (:mbrubeck)]

I'm marking this as [not-fennec-11] because:

a) For Native Fennec, 11.0 is the very first version, so this has no effect until version 12.  (There are no add-ons from previous versions for Native Fennec 11 to be incompatible with.)

b) For XUL Fennec, uplifting this to 11 just as it goes to beta does not leave much testing time.  And since most popular add-ons are already updated for compatibility with Fennec 11, the user benefit for this release cycle is very small.

Comment 7

[Ed Morley [:emorley]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/c3d1e9d47da3

Comment 8

[Lawrence Mandel [:lmandel] (use needinfo)]

Did this land before the merge? i.e. Is this change in Aurora 12 (for Native) or do we need to request approval?

Comment 9

[Matt Brubeck (:mbrubeck)]

Yes, this landed before the Aurora merge, and is in Firefox 12.

Comment 10

[Cristian Nicolae (:xti)]

Verified fixed on:

Firefox 13.0a1 (2012-02-24)
20120224031039
http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/cd120efbe4c6

Firefox 12.0a2 (2012-02-24)
20120224042008
http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-aurora/rev/643e4dd65350

--
Device: Motorola Droid 2
OS: Android 2.3.3