"Browse Periodically" addon stopped working with Firefox 47

Add-ons Add-on Support
#1

The vastly-ignored-but-how-awesome addon Browse Periodically (github repo) stopped working with Firefox 47. From the Add-on Compatibility for Firefox 47 blog post, I got the hint that something might have broke in the TabOpen/TabClose API, used by periodicbrowsing.js but having no experience in addon development, I have no means to test my hypothesis. I also have been looking for a way to access the addon logs, with no success: I have no idea where to find those.

This addon is critical to my workflow and I’m anyway interested in learning more on addons development so I’m considering taking over this addon’s maintenance, but would you advice to learn to old XUL APIs and stuffs to try fixing it as is, or should I go straight to learning the new API and rebuild it from there? In any of those cases, links to good resources are very welcome!

Have a great day,

Maxime

#2

Have you tried contacting the developer? If you’re not getting a response, forking the add-on is probably the best approach, in which case you can find the documentation here. Keep in mind that this add-on is likely using legacy APIs that will go away in the next 18 months.

1 Like
#3

so I wrote a reboot of this addon based on the WebExtension platform: Time Capsule

But writing it against Chromium (as the tooling is more mature), I ended up having several issues trying it with Firefox:

  • Bookmarks events: onCreated, onRemoved, onChanged aren’t supported, any clue on plans for those?
  • I get a ReferenceError when trying to use chrome.browserAction.openPopup: no surprise there, given the warning on Mozilla’s doc but I’m curious of what can be the alternative way to open a browserAction popup with a keyboard command
  • I get this error with bookmarks.search: Error: Type error for parameter query (Error processing url: Error: Access denied for URL about:newtab) for bookmarks.search.

Any help on those very welcome :slight_smile:

#4

Implementing those events is being tracked on this bug. Some work has been done for it, but it doesn’t look like it’s a high priority. If you’re interested in contributing to it, let us know.

Doesn’t look like there are alternatives for this one at the moment.

Does that happen for any search, or just searches where about:newtab is a potential result? Either way, it sounds like a bug, I suggest you file it here.

1 Like
#5

update on those issues: