Bring back tab groups code into PM?

[stux2000]

Hi all,

I'm not 100% sure if this is the correct board for this kind of request, but anywho, I recently began maintaining a fork of the very-popular Tab Utilities add-on. When Pale Moon 24 was released, the add-on stopped working even though it worked fine in FF24. The cause of the issue was that the add-on depended on code provided by the Tab Groups feature. Installing the add-on fixed the problem but I have to direct users to the link so they can manually add it. This is somewhat inconvenient and can cause user confusion.

Would it be possible to include the tab groups code with Pale Moon again, even if it defaults to a deactivated state? This would be the best solution for me as I wouldn't have to direct users to the add-on or have to bundle the add-on with mine. I would like to know what the community thinks. (And especially Moonchild, of course! )

Thanks,

-stux

[Moonchild]

The problem, and one of the main reasons the code was removed/externalized, is that the Tab Groups code cannot be disabled if it's in the browser core. I won't undo again what took me quite a bit of time to make happen, either. I hope you can understand that.

What, exactly, is the code you are relying on? Can't you simply import the code from the current Tab Groups add-on into your own fork that you need?

[stux2000]

The problem, and one of the main reasons the code was removed/externalized, is that the Tab Groups code cannot be disabled if it's in the browser core. I won't undo again what took me quite a bit of time to make happen, either. I hope you can understand that.

What, exactly, is the code you are relying on? Can't you simply import the code from the current Tab Groups add-on into your own fork that you need?

Hi Moonchild,

Thank you very much for your prompt response. It is understandable that you wouldn't want to put the code you worked to hard to remove back in. I am surprised that it was so pain-stakingly difficult (and that it cannot be turned off). It seems to follow Mozilla's strange decisions these days.

As I mentioned before, I only recently started working with this extension, so unfortunately, I am not sure how much of the tab group code it uses. I should be able to integrate the code but I am concerned with the code differences between PM and FF: if I override the FF groups feature, will that break something or cause unexpected behavior for users (especially in later versions when Mozilla decides to change something)? Should I instead detect if PM is running and only load the extension then? The latter option would probably the best for me. If there a way to add-ons to detect if they're running on PM?

Finally: Have there been any issues reported with the new tab groups extension? I haven't encountered many issues but I'd like to know how others are managing with the add-on. Perhaps there is a forum thread I can peruse?

Thank you for your time,

-stux

[Moonchild]

Normally, you'll have to take some time to check your existing TU code to see where it calls functions of the browser core; the error console will be your friend there.

Once you have found the calls, find the appropriate function in the Tab Groups add-on or FF core code, and make a copy into your own namespace inside your add-on, adjusting call names to it accordingly in your code.

If you do this, you will make your add-on self-contained, and remove dependency on Tab Groups code existing outside of your add-on, meaning it will not matter if you run it on a browser that has the code or a browser that does not, and it will run equally well on FF and PM.