Firefox/Projects/AddonUI

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 (bug 586718)
• 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.