903690 - Remove about page from browser

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox OS Graveyard :: Gaia::Browser, defect)

Comment 1

[Dale Harvey (:daleharvey)]

The About Page of firefox os currently doesnt have permission to access the settings API, therefore cannot be localised

Brief discussions with fabrice / justin suggested that the process sandbox is a strict boundary, so we may not be able to implement about: pages inside a mozbrowser that have chrome / elevated permissions.

We 'can' show the about page as an plain iframe or inside the browser app itself allowing us to localise it, however its navigation model is fairly dependant on it being treated as web content and this will be a really nasty hack.

Its also worth noting that the about page doesnt really make sense to be inside the browser, the 'faq' currently points to the firefox for android faq, the support links to the firefox os support page, and the credits point to the gecko contributors (whole of firefox os)

So disregarding the hack of displaying this inside the browser app itself, we either need to find a way to give about: urls elevated permissions and implement the current about page as a proper about page, or to remove the 'about firefox' page from the browser entirely and put those links in settings

Considering the current about page makes no sense, and will make even less sense given any sheets design going forward, I suggest the latter

Needinfoing Fabrice to clarify the situation with elevated permissions for the about page, and Ian for the proposal to remove the about page

Comment 2

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

(In reply to Dale Harvey (:daleharvey) from comment #1)

> Its also worth noting that the about page doesnt really make sense to be
> inside the browser, the 'faq' currently points to the firefox for android
> faq, the support links to the firefox os support page, and the credits point
> to the gecko contributors (whole of firefox os)
> 
> So disregarding the hack of displaying this inside the browser app itself,
> we either need to find a way to give about: urls elevated permissions and
> implement the current about page as a proper about page, or to remove the
> 'about firefox' page from the browser entirely and put those links in
> settings
> 
> Considering the current about page makes no sense, and will make even less
> sense given any sheets design going forward, I suggest the latter

+1, if by Settings you mean the global OS settings.

Comment 3

[[:fabrice] Fabrice Desré]

We looked at about: pages and giving them elevated privileges a while ago but decided against that for security reasons. What do we want to display in the about: page that needs elevated privileges?

Comment 4

[Brad Lassey [:blassey] (use needinfo?)]

perhaps the about: protocol handler could handle the localization http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/netwerk/protocol/about/

Comment 5

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

What's wrong with just picking up the toolkit strings like we do in other parts, notably Android is probably the closest in method.

We should land a similar fix like we did for Android to make the toolkit l10n sparse.

AFAICT, teh localization for the about pages should work fine for Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese.

Comment 6

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

See also bug 893802 for a bug to actually add gecko localizations for more locales.

Comment 7

[Dale Harvey (:daleharvey)]

The about page isnt served by gecko, its a standard iframe that is hosted by the browser app, this means it will be localised using the standard web content method, but wont change at runtime (when you switch languages a page refresh is needed), since it is displayed as web content and all web content will be similiar, this is acceptable.

However given the fact that this page is pretty much useless, going to morph this bug into getting rid of the about page from the browser

Karen could you take a look at comment 2 (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=903690#c2), we have a few about page related bugs and it would be good to make a call on this before doing any work on it.

The support page is already linked from the browser, the 'FAQ' doesnt really make sense over 'Support' (its currently the android browser faq), we may (or may not) want a link to credits in settings

Comment 8

[Karen Rudnitski [:kar]]

My sense is that we shouldn't be treating the browser as a standalone app with its own FAQ page, if our other FxOS apps aren't (which they don't seem to). I would therefore suggest we don't need a separate FAQ page for the browser and rather add any browser-specific FAQs to a general fxos support page (since we are an integrated part of the fxos)

Comment 9

[ffos-browser]

A Pivotal Tracker story has been created for this Bug: http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/57257828

Comment 10

[Karen Rudnitski [:kar]]

Agreed with product marketing that we can remove the fxos browser about page.

Comment 11

[Dale Harvey (:daleharvey)]

Attachment: Remove about page from browser

Comment 12

[Dale Harvey (:daleharvey)]

https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia/commit/d99c032bbec6e2e6e700c6b9ba9881a32c441e91

Comment 13

[John Ford [:jhford] CET/CEST Berlin Time]

Uplifted d99c032bbec6e2e6e700c6b9ba9881a32c441e91 to:
v1.2: 9f565f4095737ba99415826a23991537e2f19135