Design and implement a way for addons to integrate into Firefox UI in a way that plays nice with themes, allows maximum customizability, and eases implementation for addon developers.
Status
IN FLIGHT Spec complete, implementation in progress
Team:
- Design: Boriss
- Lead: Dietrich
Bugs:
- bug 568932 - Jetpack piece
- bug 574688 - Firefox piece
- bug 571548 - Discovery piece
Goals
- Remove the status bar
- Implement the addon bar
- Allow placement customizability through the toolbar infrastructure
Roadmap
| Date | Milestone | Status | Notes |
Spec
Stage 1: Core
- Status bar is hidden by default, and re-parented
- Addon bar is hidden by default
- The presence of widgets makes the addon bar visible
- The default location for a widget is the addon bar
- The default widget size in the addon bar is 24px
- Widgets are XUL toolbar buttons
- Widgets have a "container" property, which is the id of their default toolbar
- The default "container" value is the id of the addon bar
Stage 2: customization
- Addon bar has settings for big and small sizes (16px or 24px widgets. how to switch? context menu? toolbar customization menu?)
- What else? Sorting? Pinning? DND ordering?
Detection (target TBD):
- No notifications when addon bar is not visible
- When addon bar is visible, an icon is shown in addon bar when addon is detected
- Clicking on the icon loads a panel that displays detected addons and recommended addons
- If the user opts into more aggressive notification, the panel will automatically load when addons are detected
- To improvde discovery of the panel, we could load it automatically the first time an addon is detected
- TODO: New icon from Alex
- TODO: More interaction development from Alex
Issues
- NEEDS FIX: Status-bar status text is gone
- RESOLVED: Progress meter is gone: Current plan is to migrate this to the location bar in some fashion (SH) (bug 578028)
- RESOLVED: Download monitor is gone: The download button+panel would be in the navbar (http://limi.net/articles/improving-download-behaviors-web-browsers/) (SH) (bug 564934)
- RESOLVED: Security button and popup blocker are gone: There are notifications for this and the security information is performed by larry. (SH)
- RESOLVED: Existing addons' usage of the status bar (already installed): Hiding and reparenting status bar instead of deleting. Addons will need to release a new version that uses the Widget API, or some other mechanism to get on the addon bar.