787351 - add l10n support for content scripts

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Add-on SDK Graveyard :: General, defect, P2)

Comment 1

[Alexandre Poirot [:ochameau]]

That feature is really important for all our greasemonkey-like addons, but there is a real issue in the way how localization works and makes it hard to implement for content scripts.

localization bundle is global per addon. It means that you can only have one properties file per locale. There isn't any partition of localization keys.
It basically means that we can't split localization dictionnary and segregate only the one used in content scripts. 
So that if we want to offer localization support in content script, we would also have to load keys in content process. Currently firefox is still monoprocess, but firefox OS already is and there is still some plan around to make Firefox mutlithread (instead of multiprocess).
Adding support for content script localization would also prevent from building a very helpfull feature in cfx: the possiblity to list new/delete localization keys, in order to help localizers to their job. Mainly because we don't really know which files in data/ folder are content script.

Here is the reasons why I haven't jumped working on this.
Having said that, we might be able to add this feature while avoiding issues I just mentioned but it will most likely require much more specification work and some more major changes in the way .properties files are used/defined.

Any help is more than welcomed.

Comment 2

[Erik Vold [:erikvold] (please needinfo? me)]

I'm not sure this should be P1.

While it is a small pain, people can use message passing to pass localized values manually, and a PageMod wrapper could be made in the wild to automate the process in different ways.

Comment 3

[Aabha]

Message Passing for fetching the localized value of each string in the content script severely slows the content script performance.

As such it should be P1

Comment 4

[Firefox Bug Husbandry Bot]

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1399562