Instructions are very confusing

[LilaUraraka]

As someone with Autism, vague instructions are the bane of my existance, and I just cannot understand them. I need exact paths to follow, exact folders and files to copy. The current instruction layout makes no sense to me

[MrOtherGuy]

Unfortunately I don't think I can be much more specific regarding the instructions because the exact directory structure will be different for you than it is for me. I might be able to help you out if you tell:

1. What OS you have
2. The file path to Firefox executable
3. The file path to the Firefox profile you want fx-autoconfig to apply to (depending on your OS and how you have installed Firefox you may find this from via about:profiles or about:support)

People have brought up creating a installer script a few times, but I very deliberately don't want that - I want folks to be aware what exact changes they made to Firefox files and having to manually copy files where they need to go is pretty effective solution for that.

[LilaUraraka]

I am running Nobara 42, I am using Floorp browser, the executable path path is /opt/floorp/ profile path is /home/ashley/.floorp/ppwg6e4f.default-release/

[MrOtherGuy]

Okay, so the top level of this repository contains 5 folders, profile, program, test_profile, test_tb_profile and types - you need to only care about profile and program other ones exist for testing and development purposes.

1. Copy the contents of program into /opt/floorp/
2. Copy the contents of profile into /home/ashley/.floorp/ppwg6e4f.default-release/

In both cases, if copied sub-folders need to be merged with folders that already exist, then do so.

Lastly, I should mention that I have no idea if fx-autoconfig even works at all with Floorp, so you'll have to experiment.

[SergeVDev]

Hello @MrOtherGuy,

I'm not autistic, just dumb :)

Could you please clarify, what that means:

Scripts and styles will still only be injected into parent-process documents, which includes things like about:preferences, about:support and about:addons - but does not include about:newtab and few other about: pages, which are run in a separate, less privileged process.

Does it mean I cannot customize about:newtab with fx-autoconfig? Before diving deeper into experimenting, I'd like to know is my goal achievable at all (I want to restore thumbnails and add changing wallpapers by timeout). Thank you very much in advance!

[MrOtherGuy]

You absolutely can but doing so requires much more work than simply accessing things in the parent process. Communicating with child processes needs to be done using JsActors - read more in firefox-source-docs which.

For a quite a long time now, I have had an experimental helper for that in my local setup - and I decided to add that as an experimental feature to fx-autoconfig. So if you wish to try it, get the just-now updated fx-autoconfig version 0.10.10, set the pref userChromeJS.experimental.enabled to true and restart Firefox. Then follow the WindowActor examples

[SergeVDev]

You absolutely can but doing so requires much more work than simply accessing things in the parent process. Communicating with child processes needs to be done using JsActors - read more in firefox-source-docs which.

For a quite a long time now, I have had an experimental helper for that in my local setup - and I decided to add that as an experimental feature to fx-autoconfig. So if you wish to try it, get the just-now updated fx-autoconfig version 0.10.10, set the pref userChromeJS.experimental.enabled to true and restart Firefox. Then follow the WindowActor examples

Thank you very much!

Unfortunately, I can't make this work.

1. I downloaded the whole 0.10.10 code.

2. Unpacked Program → FF bin folder. (As far as I see, nothing changed. config.js is exactly the same, and so is \defaults\pref\config-prefs.js.

I turned experimental features on, so the whole \defaults\pref\config-prefs.js now is the following:

pref("general.config.obscure_value", 0);
pref("general.config.filename", "config.js");
// Sandbox needs to be disabled in release and Beta versions
pref("general.config.sandbox_enabled", false);
//pref("userChromeJS.persistent_domcontent_callback", false);
pref("userChromeJS.experimental.enabled", true);

(I used to turn userChromeJS.persistent_domcontent_callback on, trying to be called for about: documents. It worked for about:preferences, but not for about:newtab, that's why I had asked for help. Anyway, it's commented).

Getting ahead, I double checked spelling: the dot before enabled. Because experimental.enabled is inconsistent with sandbox_enabled. But in boot.sys.mjs it's equal to the PREF_EXPERIMENTAL value. I even tried to replace reading the pref with just this.EXPERIMENTS_ENABLED = true; — to no avail.

3. Unpacked chrome → chrome. Actually, as far as I see only the utils folder matters.

4. Created the structure as described in fx-autoconfig#windowactors (FI standing for Firefox Improvements is my name for the script, so I used FINewtabActor instead of TestActor):

/chrome/JS/fi_newtab.uc.js
/chrome/JS/FINewtabActor/FINewtabActorChild.sys.mjs
/chrome/JS/FINewtabActor/FINewtabActorParent.sys.mjs

5. Fixed a missing } at the end of FINewtabActorChild.sys.mjs (from here).

I expected that 'DOMContentLoaded' would trigger and I just see the appended h1, but nothing happened. I tried navigating to about:newtab, examined its content with the Inspector dev tool, but the only h1 I saw was the native one (with the FF logo).

So I added some extra debugging alerts as I always do :) Here's the full code of all three files:

/chrome/JS/fi_newtab.uc.js:

// ==UserScript==
// @name FI_newtab_test_script
// @WindowActor FINewtabActor
// @WindowActorMatches ["about:newtab","about:home"]
// ==/UserScript==

window.getThing = (...args) =>
{
	UC_API.Experimental.WindowActors.get("FINewtabActor")?.sendQuery("doThing", {args: args})
	.then(console.log)
};

alert("FINewtabActor: window.location.href=" + window.location.href);

This one is being shown. It says: FINewtabActor: window.location.href=chrome://browser/content/browser.xhtml.

Also, I see FI_newtab_test_script in the Tools → userScripts menu (it is checked).

FINewtabActorParent.sys.mjs:

export class FINewtabActorParent extends JSWindowActorParent
{
	constructor()
	{
		alert('FINewtabActorParent constructor()');
		super();
	}

	// You don't need to implement this method, because it's inherited from
	// parent class. This exmample just forwards the arguments to the parent
	// class and adds logging
	async sendQuery(...args)
	{
		console.log("Querying...");
		let reply = await super.sendQuery(...args);
		console.log("Got reply!");
		return reply
	}

	// Messages from child that are not responses to sendQuery are handled here
	async receiveMessage(message)
	{
		if (message.name === "event:info")
		{
			console.log("Info from Child: ", message.data.info)
		}
		else
		{
			console.log("Message: ", message.name)
		}
	}
}

This one (alert('FINewtabActorParent constructor()');) is not shown. In other words, FINewtabActorParent constructor is not called. Or it looks so.

FINewtabActorChild.sys.mjs:

export class FINewtabActorChild extends JSWindowActorChild
{
	constructor()
	{
		alert('FINewtabActorChild constructor()');
		super();
	}

	doThing(className)
	{
		return Array.from(this.document.querySelectorAll(className)).map(a => a.title)
	}

	async receiveMessage(message)
	{
		if (message.name === "doThing")
		{
			return this.doThing(...message.data.args)
		}

		throw new Error(`Unknown message type: '${message.name}'`)
	}

	actorCreated()
	{
		// Do initialization work here if needed
		alert('actorCreated()');
	}

	handleEvent(event)
	{
		alert('event.type: ' + event.type);

		// This is the only event we currently support in the loader
		if (event.type === 'DOMContentLoaded')
		{
			alert("FINewtabActorChild.sys.mjs: window.location.href=" + window.location.href);

			this.sendAsyncMessage("event:DOMContentLoaded", { info: "this happened" });
			let h1 = this.document.createElement("h1");
			h1.textContent = "Test actor header";
			this.document.body.prepend(h1);
			this.sendAsyncMessage("event:info", { info: "Added header woo!" });
		}
	}
}

There are 3 alerts here: in the constructor, in actorCreated() and in handleEvent() before type checking. None is shown.

And here I am :)

As far as I understood,

The handleEvent() gets called "automatically" because the loader script tells the browser to notify our class for "DOMContentLoaded" event.

…means I got nothing to do to be called after the newtab document is loaded.

What did I do wrong?

Thank you anyway, your job is great!

[SergeVDev]

Hello @MrOtherGuy, could you please take a look at the comment above? Thank you in advance!

[SergeVDev]

Hello @MrOtherGuy,

Or. My. Gosh. Both alert and window are not defined for the calling context. My bad!

[Bart Simpson mode]
I will use console.log() for debugging.
I will use console.log() for debugging.
I will use console.log() for debugging.
I will use console.log() for debugging.
I will use console.log() for debugging.
[/Bart Simpson mode]

Now everything works as expected. Thank you, sir!!!

[MrOtherGuy]

Yes indeed, window is not directly available, and alert() is a method if the window so it doesn't work either.

However, you should be able to get reference to the window object by using this.contentWindow in your windowActorChild.

[SergeVDev]

Hello @MrOtherGuy ,

Could you please recommend a reference manual for a newbie XUL developer?

I had tried to use parseXULToFragment() (as you do in boot.sys.mjs) along with insertAdjacentElement() (as you don't) and got "The second argument [of insertAdjacentElement()] doesn't implement Element interface" in the console. So I wanted to read more about MozXULElement.parseXULToFragment(), presuming it's covered in MDN (in some special section), but it seems Google can't find any documents at all.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/XUL:Home_Page looks a bit abandoned )) The last modified date is 2010.

(append() works, but I'd like to read the whole documentation first before writing any code).

Also, I have no idea, why do you call window.MozXULElement.insertFTLIfNeeded("toolkit/about/aboutSupport.ftl");. When I look for insertFTLIfNeeded, Google thinks I'm into fetishes. Kinda true, but improving FF UI is very unpopular one ))

[MrOtherGuy]

Not really, sorry. As far as I'm aware, basically all xul documentation is "read firefox internal code" - as in, its not really any standard, much of the functions are just some logic that Firefox uses and lot of it quite old.

As for that ftl, we call the insertFTLIfNeeded because we use localization strings that are normally used in about:support to localize few strings in the scripts menu generated by fx-autoconfig. The items "open directory", "restart " and "Clear startup-cache and restart " should get translated to whatever language the user has.

[SergeVDev]

As for that ftl, we call the insertFTLIfNeeded because we use localization strings that are normally used in about:support to localize few strings in the scripts menu generated by fx-autoconfig. The items "open directory", "restart " and "Clear startup-cache and restart " should get translated to whatever language the user has.

I got it.

Here is the string table: https://github.com/mozilla-l10n/firefox-l10n-source/blob/main/toolkit/toolkit/about/aboutSupport.ftl

(Local versions are here: https://github.com/mozilla-l10n/firefox-l10n/tree/main).

You use them as this:

aDoc.l10n.formatValues(["restart-button-label", "clear-startup-cache-label", "show-dir-label"]).

Nice trick with &. I was going to create localizable string-table-XX.js files, but maybe concatenating would be enough for me as well.

Thank you for your help!