792240 - Handle favicon for about:home in Java

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 941868

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) (use needinfo?)]

We currently depend on aboutHome.xhtml and a <link> tag to get the right favicon for the Java-implemented Home page. We have special case code to handle the <title> in Java though. This keeps the urlbar title from flickering between states.

Currently, the favicon will change states from the "default" favicon to the real favicon. We could just whitelist the about:home URL and set the favicon right away in Java. We could then remove the <link> tag in aboutHome.xhtml. This would remove the delay in displaying the favicon _and_ reduce a <link> JS->Java message sent during startup.

Comment 1

[Chris Kitching [:ckitching]]

Hasn't this problem ceased to exist now the new about:home has landed?

Comment 2

[Chris Kitching [:ckitching]]

(In reply to Chris Kitching [:ckitching] from comment #1)
> Hasn't this problem ceased to exist now the new about:home has landed?

Sorry for the spam. Apparently it has not - but isn't this a duplicate of Bug 773272 (Or at least doesn't a subsumption relation exist in one way or the other)? Same underlying problem (Wanting to special-case this Favicon so we can load it before Gecko has come to life).

Comment 3

[Chris Kitching [:ckitching]]

Of particular note is that the Favicon in question is actually in the local database from the very start. Declared:
http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/mobile/android/base/strings.xml.in#284

And added to the initial database on first load within this call:
http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/mobile/android/base/db/BrowserProvider.java#1180
Ultimately:
http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/mobile/android/base/db/BrowserProvider.java#3003

So it would seem that we really don't need Gecko for this - all we need to do is call loadFavicon on the tab in question at an earlier point and the cache should work its magic and make everything okay.
How to special-case-ify this in a non-disgusting way is another question, however - but it seems all the ingredients are present for this to be relatively straightforward.

Comment 4

[Wesley Johnston (:wesj)]

I'm not sure exactly how things work right now, but in the past, we added that favicon primarily so that the bookmarks/history lists in the awesomescreen were filled in at first run. We have an html about:home that (used to?) actually load in the background and would replace this icon with one from a jar :) (yay efficiency!)

http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/mobile/android/chrome/content/aboutHome.xhtml

That also allows us to readd this icon if for some reason our favicon db was cleared (and not recreated with this already in it).

Comment 5

[Richard Newman [:rnewman]]

I'm pretty sure I did this in Bug 941868.