_execute_action, _execute_browser_action and _execute_page_action commands

[carlosjeurissen]

As reported by @beaufortfrancois in https://crbug.com/1371857, there are some issues related to the command to open webExtensions action.

Background

In MV2, this classically was defined as _execute_browser_action and _execute_page_action for browserAction and pageAction respectively. In MV3, both were renamed to _execute_action.

In the current situation, when a user set a certain shortcut in MV2 for _execute_browser_action, then upgrades to MV3 and renames it to _execute_action, the shortcut is lost.

Solution

Internally, browsers should threat _execute_browser_action, _execute_page_action and _execute_action all as equivalent and only store one custom shortcut from the user for all of them. If multiple are found, either stored by the browser, or multiple definitions in the manifest.json commands key, the _execute_action would be preferred.

To assist in the process, browsers should warn about the presence of _execute_* if the equivalent action key is not present, which would fix: https://crbug.com/1353210

Tracking issue for Firefox: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1797811

[beaufortfrancois]

Thank you @carlosjeurissen ;)

[carlosjeurissen]

During our 2022-10-27 meeting, Chrome was not supportive of keeping multiple names alive due to the amount of resources this would cost. Support from Firefox is unknown.

As for easing the migration from mv2 to mv3, this is not an issue in Safari, as they do currently not support commands. However, there was consensus between browsers this migration should be handled during the transition from mv2 to mv3.

This can be tracked for Chrome in https://crbug.com/1353210
Firefox will consider this when further implementing mv3. @Rob--W should we open a separate issue for this in Mozilla Bugzilla?

[Rob--W]

This issue is tracked in Firefox at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1797811

[Rob--W]

Chromium has fixed the migration issue in https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1371857 .

[zombie]

It looks like we can close this, as I would consider this a bug, and since the only issue left is a bug in Firefox, that has a tracking issue,.

[Rob--W]

This has been fixed in Firefox 127.