Hi all,

the e-mail below arrived on dev-apps-thunderbird this morning.

Looks like add-ons are under serious threat in TB 59 and all non-maintained add-ons will be pretty much dead. Even for maintained add-ons it will be hard to implement what Mark describes (embedded WebExtension).

Let me summarise the threats:

• TB 57: Many interfaces removed, but maintained (legacy) add-ons can be made do work.
• TB 58: defaults/preferences mechanism removed. Bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1414398 which tries to re-establish that mechanism hasn't had sufficient traction just yet, IMHO.
• TB 59: See below. I also noticed that add-ons the don't show the "Options" button in the add-ons manager any more. That may be due to bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1414406.

Jörg.

-------- Forwarded Message --------    Subject:  Extensions will need to implement WebExtension parts for in-line preferences in TB 59  Date:  Mon, 20 Nov 2017 08:26:45 +0000  From:  Mark Banner <mbanner@mozilla.com>  To:  dev-apps-thunderbird@lists.mozilla.org

Just a heads up to folks for TB 59, which I believe will be the next ESR.

Firefox has removed support for legacy add-ons to implement in-line preferences in the Add-on Manager UI.

To maintain the ability to have preferences you'll need to write an embedded WebExtension <https://developer.mozilla.org/Add-ons/WebExtensions/Embedded_WebExtensions> to go inside your legacy add-on. More details on the options_ui here <https://developer.mozilla.org/Add-ons/WebExtensions/manifest.json/options_ui>.

You'll also need to remove the old options definitions from install.rdf so that the add-on will install correctly (otherwise Thunderbird reports it is "corrupt").

Unfortunately, this can't easily be tested in TB 59 at the moment due to bug 1418914 <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1418914>. Hopefully that can be resolved soon.

Mark.

dev-apps-thunderbird mailing list
dev-apps-thunderbird@lists.mozilla.org
https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-apps-thunderbird

Here a survey of problems and bugs:

• defaults/preferences mechanism not working any more (from TB 58): https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1414398
• "Options" button disappeared (from TB 59): https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1419145

According to Mark's original e-mail, to get options going again, the add-on needs an embedded WebExtension (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/manifest.json/options_ui), hence:

• Support WebExtensions in TB: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1396172
• and blocking that, or vice versa: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1418914 (something about E10SUtils.jsm which I don't fully understand).

Gloomy? Certainly gloomy of all add-on authors need to embed a WebExtension now.

Jörg.