"About:..." bookmarks are protected and cannot be moved + Demand for integration of tabs and bookmarks (e.g. BSP2 with TST)

[kenreeser]

I like Bookmark search plus 2 so much that I want to use it in lieu of Firefox's built-in bookmark manager (inside sidebar). However, I discovered an issue in which I'm unable to reorganize bookmarks and folders via drag-&-drop when they're more than 2 folder levels deep in the hierarchy.

[aaFn]

Hello @kenreeser, could you illustrate with a specific scenario of what you re doing which is not working, because I am not able to reproduce here ?

Also, could you first, before reproducing, do a "Reload all bookmarks from FF now" on the options page, to make sure BSP2 is well synchronized with FF ? There are some cases where FF says it has done something, but in fact it didn't do it, and so this generates a shift between the two which can cause that kind of issue later.

[kenreeser]

Certainly. I have my bookmarks organized in at least 5 levels of hierarchical folders. And, when I attempt to reorganize bookmarks within a 5th level hierarchical bookmark folder, BSP2 is unable to move them. At that level, when I attempt to drag-&-drop a bookmarks, they just snap back to their original locations in the folder. I mistakenly wrote 3rd level hierarchical bookmark folder in my initial Git ticket—very sorry. I used the Reload all bookmarks from FF now button, but it didn't make a difference. Also, it would extremely helpful if you could implement a subpanel interface like the author of Tree Style Tab, Piro, in his newest extension, TST Bookmarks Panel. I really like having a split side-panel that shows both my bookmarks and open tabs. Regards, Ken Reeser

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On Apr 25, 2020, at 3:48 AM, aaFn ***@***.***> wrote: Hello @kenreeser <https://github.com/kenreeser>, could you illustrate with a specific scenario of what you re doing whic his not working, because I am not able to reproduce here ? Also, could you first, before reproducing, do a "Reload all bookmarks from FF now" on the options page, to make sure BSP2 is well synchronized with FF ? There are some cases where FF says it has done something, but in fact it didn't do it, and so this generates a shift between the two which can cause that kind of issue later. — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#140 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ADKPQ5LWENGBNVRU76RMZBTROKIVFANCNFSM4MQQSEZQ>.

[aaFn]

Hello @kenreeser, well I tried on my side with L5, L6 and L7 folders, no problem.
It must be something else.

It may be a bug, or simply that for some reason BSP2 considers your folder and bookmarks within it as protected.

1) Protected hypothesis

• How is the drag mouse cursor behaving when you drag to the place you want to drop on and it doesn't work ?
• Does it change to a "no-drop" icon ? (see "no-drop" in https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/cursor)
• Or does it remain like the "copy" one (less the plus sign in the little rectangle) ?

2) Bug hypothesis
Could I ask you a trace when you attempt such a drag & drop ?:

• Open the browser console (Ctrl+Shift+J)
• Click on the "Console Settings" wheel (top right)
• Activate "Show Content Messages"
• Empty it (tray icon on top left)

Then do a failing drag & drop.
Then select all messages you see inside the browser console, and copy/paste them in your response here.
Hope we can catch it ...

3° Something else ?
For a start, could you select the folder where you have a problem, and drag & drop it here, in the GitHub text composition window of your response ?
It will be incomplete as I will miss the names of bookmarks, but at least I will be able to see its structure and URLs of components, and try to reproduce on my side..

---

On integrating with TST, problem is that for the moment it has too strong "Known restrictions" for BSP2 to work, cf. https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/SubPanel-API.
The drag & drop functions with external objects would stop working (I am not sure why TST has that limitation, I managed to get around most of it on my side), and most of all, the fact that we cannot open native context menus .. BSP2 now heavily relies on them ... :-(

[kenreeser]

Thanks again for reviewing this issue and providing next step guidance. I'll try your recommendations out later today and reply. I wanted to reply sooner to ensure you understood, I didn't mean BSP2 to be integrated with TST. Instead, I was hoping you could reproduce the same split panel capabilities—except without TST's lack of drag-&-drop of items and folders (which you've already figured out). Regards, Ken Reeser

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On Apr 26, 2020, at 5:06 AM, aaFn ***@***.***> wrote: Hello @kenreeser <https://github.com/kenreeser>, well I tried on my side with L5, L6 and L7 folders, no problem. It must be something else. It may be a bug, or simply that for some reason BSP2 considers your folder and bookmarks within it as protected. 1) Protected hypothesis How is the drag mouse cursor behaving when you drag to the place you want to drop on and it doesn't work ? Does it change to a "no-drop" icon ? (see "no-drop" in https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/cursor <https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/cursor>) Or does it remain like the "copy" one (less the plus sign in the little rectangle) ? 2) Bug hypothesis Could I ask you a trace when you attempt such a drag & drop ?: Open the browser console (Ctrl+Shift+J) Click on the "Console Settings" wheel (top right) Activate "Show Content Messages" Empty it (tray icon on top left) Then do a failing drag & drop. Then select all messages you see inside the browser console, and copy/paste them in your response here. Hope we can catch it ... 3° Something else ? For a start, could you select the folder where you have a problem, and drag & drop it here, in the GitHub text composition window of your response ? It will be incomplete as I will miss the names of bookmarks, but at least I will be able to see its structure and URLs of components, and try to reproduce on my side.. On integrating with TST, problem is that for the moment it has too strong "Known restrictions" for BSP2 to work, cf. https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/SubPanel-API <https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/SubPanel-API>. The drag & drop functions with external objects would stop working (I am not sure why TST has that limitation, I managed to get around most of it on my side), and most of all, the fact that we cannot open native context menus .. BSP2 now heavily relies on them ... :-( — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#140 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ADKPQ5KZLKI46XRZKWRYBZDROP2QXANCNFSM4MQQSEZQ>.

[kenreeser]

Okay, here's an update: Coincidentally, the bookmarks I was attempting to reorganize located in a L5 folder were all Firefox configuration links (i.e. about:config <about:config>, about:memory <about:memory>, about:support <about:support>, etc). For some reason BSP2 is unable to move these types of bookmarks no matter which folder level they're located. To that end, I was able to reorganize regular bookmarks in L5 folders. Regards, Ken Reeser 📞 407.409.3875

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On Apr 26, 2020, at 5:06 AM, aaFn ***@***.***> wrote: Hello @kenreeser <https://github.com/kenreeser>, well I tried on my side with L5, L6 and L7 folders, no problem. It must be something else. It may be a bug, or simply that for some reason BSP2 considers your folder and bookmarks within it as protected. 1) Protected hypothesis How is the drag mouse cursor behaving when you drag to the place you want to drop on and it doesn't work ? Does it change to a "no-drop" icon ? (see "no-drop" in https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/cursor <https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/cursor>) Or does it remain like the "copy" one (less the plus sign in the little rectangle) ? 2) Bug hypothesis Could I ask you a trace when you attempt such a drag & drop ?: Open the browser console (Ctrl+Shift+J) Click on the "Console Settings" wheel (top right) Activate "Show Content Messages" Empty it (tray icon on top left) Then do a failing drag & drop. Then select all messages you see inside the browser console, and copy/paste them in your response here. Hope we can catch it ... 3° Something else ? For a start, could you select the folder where you have a problem, and drag & drop it here, in the GitHub text composition window of your response ? It will be incomplete as I will miss the names of bookmarks, but at least I will be able to see its structure and URLs of components, and try to reproduce on my side.. On integrating with TST, problem is that for the moment it has too strong "Known restrictions" for BSP2 to work, cf. https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/SubPanel-API <https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/SubPanel-API>. The drag & drop functions with external objects would stop working (I am not sure why TST has that limitation, I managed to get around most of it on my side), and most of all, the fact that we cannot open native context menus .. BSP2 now heavily relies on them ... :-( — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#140 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ADKPQ5KZLKI46XRZKWRYBZDROP2QXANCNFSM4MQQSEZQ>.

[aaFn]

Hello @kenreeser , ah yes, I had coded initially a principle that any bookmark with "about:.." URL should be protected ..
Probably time to review that rule now. Let me check.

[aaFn]

Ok, I see no more reason to keep them protected, so I will remove that protection in 2.0.76.
Thanks, aaFn.

[kenreeser]

Thanks very much for the update. Please think more about adding a split/subpanel so we can see & interact with our tabs and bookmarks simultaneously. Also, do you have a donation link? I’m a big believer in paying for great software. Regards, Ken Reeser

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On Apr 27, 2020, at 3:38 AM, aaFn ***@***.***> wrote: Ok, I see no more reason to keep them protected, so I will remove that protection in 2.0.76. Thanks, aaFn. — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe.

[aaFn]

Ah, I had indeed initially the intent to add tabs searching to BSP2, since search was the primary motivation for this add-on. That was including then a specific tree / split subpanel to list all tabs, and use the search box to locate the tab we wanted, as well as manipulate them.

I had this todo in my list as of the first version (2.01):

• TODO: Add section to show the current tab as a "simili bookmark", allowing:
  • local (inside sidebar, more practical) drag & drop for bookmark creation,
  • on double click or right click menu, expands as a tabs panel for switching very quickly when we have large number of open tabs (similar to "Tab Sidebar" and "Vertical Tabs Reloaded" add-ons),
  • double click back or right click menu on it to restore the Bookmarks view,
  • and most of all to search on them (not available in the two mentioned add-ons).

However, FF made an intelligent move as of version 64, they added a native Tab search feature, accessible through the down arrow at right of all the tabs (appearing when there are more tabs open than can fit on the tabs bar), or by using "%" followed by search terms in the address bar (see https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-search-open-tabs-in-firefox/).

From then I removed the todo, all the more that the remaining value for doing something like that was already covered by TST, and the intent is not to compete with it.

At this stage, I guess a good way to get the two things together would be to find a way with @piroor to collaborate, or to understand and remove at least restrictions #3 and #1 from https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/SubPanel-API .. We can try to see if he would be receptive ..

.
On a donation link, I guess I'll see that one day, for now I didn't make my mind on which method to use. If anybody has an advice on good donation systems out there, I'll gladly receive the wiseness of others :-)

Thanks, aaFn.

[kenreeser]

First of all, before I asked for a new feature (i.e. split pane), I should've have complimented you on the bookmark search feature—ITS FANTASTIC!!!!! I have a lot of bookmark folders and many times, I want to be able to not only search for a bookmark, but be shown in what folder it's located—thus, the reason I found your extension. I couldn't believe my eyes when I did a quick search within Mozilla's list of extensions and found BSP2. And, then I discovered I could perform ALL the bookmark functions found within FF's native bookmarks panel. I recently found TST and really liked the sub-panel concept, but didn't like the fact you can't drag&drop new bookmarks directly into folders within the sub-panel. Perhaps the sub-panel contains a limitation. I like BSP2 so much I want to use it full time over TST and FF's bookmark panel. And, your adding a sub-panel that would allow for the dragging&dropping of new bookmarks into folders would be the Pièce De Résistance. I really don't want to have switch back and forth between BSP2 and TST. Give it some thought. Regards, Ken Reeser

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On Apr 27, 2020, at 6:53 PM, aaFn ***@***.***> wrote: Ah, I had indeed initially the intent to add tabs searching to BSP2, since search was the primary motivation for this add-on. That was including then a specific tree / split subpanel to list all tabs, and use the search box to locate the tab we wanted, as well as manipulate them. I had this todo in my list as of the first version (2.01): TODO: Add section to show the current tab as a "simili bookmark", allowing: local (inside sidebar, more practical) drag & drop for bookmark creation, on double click or right click menu, expands as a tabs panel for switching very quickly when we have large number of open tabs (similar to "Tab Sidebar" and "Vertical Tabs Reloaded" add-ons), double click back or right click menu on it to restore the Bookmarks view, and most of all to search on them (not available in the two mentioned add-ons). However, FF made an intelligent move as of version 64, they added a native Tab search feature, accessible through the down arrow at right of all the tabs (appearing when there are more tabs open than can fit on the tabs bar), or by using "%" followed by search terms in the address bar (see https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-search-open-tabs-in-firefox/ <https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-search-open-tabs-in-firefox/>). From then I removed the todo, all the more that the remaining value for doing something like that was already covered by TST, and the intent is not to compete with it. At this stage, I guess a good way to get the two things together would to find a way with @piroor <https://github.com/piroor> to collaborate, or to understand and remove at least restrictions #3 <#3> and #1 <#1> from https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/SubPanel-API <https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/SubPanel-API> .. We can try to see if he would be receptive .. . On a donation link, I guess I'll see that one day, for now I didn't make my mind on which method to use. If anybody has an advice on good donation systems out there, I'll gladly receive the wiseness of others :-) Thanks, aaFn. — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#140 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ADKPQ5OQWMBFZQT5ROAU5Y3ROYEGTANCNFSM4MQQSEZQ>.

[piroor]

The restrictions around subpanels in TST looks to be from security system of Firefox's iframe implementation, but I'm positive to improve user experience of subpanels if it can be done without any security concern.

Inspired from this issue, I've experimentally implement more APIs to transfer drag data between TST and a subpanel:

• piroor/treestyletab@c284bed
• piroor/treestyletab@5995dbb
• piroor/tst-bookmarks-subpanel@9f762b5
• piroor/tst-bookmarks-subpanel@b050b74

With these changes drag data (URL and title of dragged tabs) can be stolen by helper addons, but I think it is not a security threat because drag data is already public to other applications via OS's API.

The context menu problem is little difficult. To improve user experience around context menu, I think TST must provide APIs to replace all context menu items on subpanels. I think that improving the existing fake context menu API can become a solution.

[aaFn]

Hello @piroor, thank you for your quick answer here.

On context menu:
I had, and still have for FF < 64, for those users which want to stick to earlier versions like FF56, my own fake menus,. However, this is a pain to manage and I switched over to the native FF one very quickly (using by the way your excellent articles on it), and I do not really maintain their content anymore.

My view is that we should find a way to keep using native FF context menus on add-ons running in TST subpanels, so that there are no two codebases for them to manage, corresponding to two environments of run. That should be as transparent as possible, on FF behavior/means used, their oddities/bugs we have to manage (we shouldn't introduce more or others), and on coding logics.

• What is the problem with menus.overrideContext() in iframes ? (I must confess I didn't experiment)
• Would it be possible to "proxy" it by TST, in relation with the TST registration API you designed ?

On drag & drop
I see your commits above are mostly about exchanging with TST, correct ?
Beyond the problem of exchanging with the parent TST window, what is the exact problem of drag & drop not working on a subpanel ? Typically, BSP2 is supporting the reception of

// When the dragged element is one of our bookmarks its dt.types will be
//   dt.types        : application/x-bookmark,text/x-moz-place<-xxx>, [text/uri-list,] text/plain, text/html
// When it is a native bookmark, it will be
//   dt.types        : text/x-moz-place<-xxx>
// When it is a native tab, it will be
//   dt.types        : text/x-moz-text-internal
// When it is a link in an HTML page, or in the address bar:
//   dt.types        : text/x-moz-url,text/x-moz-url-data,text/x-moz-url-desc,text/uri-list,text/_moz_htmlcontext,text/_moz_htmlinfo,text/html,text/plain

and is sending

// For a bookmark:	application/x-bookmark and text/x-moz-place,text/x-moz-url,text/plain,text/html
// For a folder:	application/x-bookmark and text/x-moz-place-container,text/x-moz-url,text/plain,text/html
// For a separator:	application/x-bookmark and text/x-moz-place-separator,text/plain,text/html

// application/x-bookmark is for BSP2 internal drag & drops.
// Rest is:// text/x-moz-place<-xxx>:
// Native Bookmark data like  {"title":"Nouveau dossier","id":2238,"itemGuid":"VQ8ulNGyfXk0","instanceId":"jvwImUhXA2rV","parent":2099,"parentGuid":"CLSASmpIpBmQ",
// 							 "dateAdded":1536393478662000,"lastModified":1536393478662000,"type":"text/x-moz-place-container"}
//							{"title":"_  New bookmark","id":2350,"itemGuid":"JE2j0D-5tnpT","instanceId":"jvwImUhXA2rV","parent":2028,"parentGuid":"XmOZ-HAGbfEM",
//							 "dateAdded":1550944109935000,"lastModified":1551218607521000,"type":"text/x-moz-place","uri":"about:blank"}
//							{"title":"","id":2239,"itemGuid":"gORenOTsYJdk","instanceId":"jvwImUhXA2rV","parent":2028,"parentGuid":"XmOZ-HAGbfEM",
//							 "dateAdded":1536396421579000,"lastModified":1551022707690000,"type":"text/x-moz-place-separator"}
// text/plain:
// Native Bookmark data like  New folder3\nabout:blank\n--------------------\nabout:blank
//							about:blank
//							--------------------
// text/html:
// Native Bookmark data like  <DL><DT>New folder3</DT><DD><A HREF="about:blank">New bookmark5</A></DD><DD><HR></DD><DD><A HREF="about:blank">New bookmark4</A></DD></DL>
//							<A HREF="about:blank">_  New bookmark</A>
//							<HR>

• Any problem, apart from that bug of course https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1531539 :-), in getting direct drag & drop events on the subpanel, from or to external areas, in FF (that can be another instance of BSP2 inside a tab, or in another FF window), or outside FF (e.g. Thunderbird, notepad ..) ?
• Wouldn't it be possible to agree on particular dt.types and formats for D&D to allow exchange between the subpanel and the TST parent ?