Firefox: get built-in list of sites enabled by default

[aspiers]

On Chrome, rolod0x is automatically enabled for all the sites on the built-in list. However on Firefox, this doesn't happen, and I haven't yet found a way to make it happen.

This is a follow-up from #19, and possibly the only remaining item before the Firefox version achieves feature parity with the Chrome version.

[aspiers]

Found https://stackoverflow.com/questions/76965930/how-to-have-always-allow-on-chess-com-option-be-enabled-by-default-for-a-firef with no good answer (only downgrading to MV2 which isn't a realistic option).

[aspiers]

Found https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/manifest.json/host_permissions#requested_permissions_and_user_prompts which says:

Most browsers treat host_permissions as optional. If you request permissions using this key, users may get prompted to grant those permissions during installation. As of June 2023, Safari, Firefox, and some Chromium-based browsers don't prompt the user during installation.

Users can also grant or revoke host permissions on an ad hoc basis. For example, in Firefox, users can do this using the extensions panel.

Your extension can check whether it has all the required permissions immediately after installation using permissions.contains. If it doesn't have the necessary permissions, it can request them using permissions.request. Providing an onboarding step to explain why some permissions are necessary before requesting them might also be helpful.

So a workaround might be to offer a button Firefox users can click on an initial setup page to trigger requesting permission for the built-in sites. However, Firefox might still make the user approve each domain separately, which would be an annoying number of clicks.

[aspiers]

Searching https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/ for host_permissions finds:

• 1766026 - Add optional_host_permissions in mv3
• 1766752 - granted_host_permissions does not automatically grant permissions in content_scripts

Also found this, although it seems to relate more to activeTab than host permissions:

• 1851083 - Manifest V3 extensions with activeTab/tabs permission require user interaction not previously required, showing blue dot on desktop and no indicator on Android

[aspiers]

https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/%4119 contains the best history I've found so far explaining the status quo and how we got here.