Shield Studies Utils as Embedded Web Extension

[groovecoder]

Web Extensions are the future!

• jpm and Jetpack are going away ...
• web-ext enables a very nice development workflow with file-watching and live-reloading built in
• Web Extension APIs are cross-browser so a study could theoretically be done in Chrome & Opera as well

But Web Extensions have some draw-backs ...

• No built-in way to send Telemetry pings (The Test Pilot add-on enables this by creating a BroadcastChannel for all experiment add-ons to communicate with the Test Pilot add-on, which then sends Telemetry pings)
• No built-in way to change prefs.

We should work out a shield study template that leverages web extensions, addresses the telemetry & prefs challenges, and integrates the shield plumbing for splitting users up into cohorts for variate analysis.

[groovecoder]

To get started, I may just fork & branch from https://github.com/johngruen/shield-template to see if I can just get a basic web extensions code-base integrated.

[gregglind]

This is an awesome idea!

I think this is A Project, and I want to find all blockers and eliminate them.

I see these issues as possibly blocking changeover. Educate me as these become possible.

1. prefs (as study storage / persistence)
2. telemetry (both for sending packets AND making sure the user has an id)
3. knowing the 'phase of install'
4. self-uninstalling of addon (and recording it before the addon dies)
5. opening tabs (for survey) WITH PROFILE INFO.

Fwiw, once a system addon for launching these lands, web-ex sounds like the right thing :) 2017-q1

[gregglind]

I doing think you mean that repo! That is for static amo consent pages!

On Tue, Oct 18, 2016 at 2:10 PM, luke crouch [email protected]
wrote:

To get started, I may just fork & branch from
https://github.com/johngruen/shield-template to see if I can just get a
basic web extensions code-base integrated.

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[motin]

Update on this issue:
The official template has been sporting a hybrid legacy add-on / web extension workflow for quite a while now, but it still requires messaging between the web extension and legacy add-on code to workaround the limitations of the web extension apis. A first step is to remove the need for this messaging and instead craft web extension apis to remove need for legacy code for common study operations.

[motin]

Good news on this issue - this is finally happening as part of version 5 and is being tracked by mozilla/shield-studies-addon-template#53 (Also related: mozilla/shield-studies-addon-template#55, #114 and the v5-label in general when browsing issues)

[motin]

@gregglind gregglind changed the title from Create a Web Extensions template for Shield Studies to Shield Studies Utils as Embedded Web Extension 4 days ago

My comment above is related to creating a web extensions template for shield studies. We are dropping the idea of embedding web extensions in legacy add-ons. Revert the renaming of the issue?

[motin]

This is fixed with utils v5 which has now landed in master (#197)