Whimsy Totally Broken in FF v54.0.1

[whispy]

I'm using v3.0.0 of Whimsy from AMO on FF v54.0.1.

Broken:

• When New Tab Icons is set to off, the new tab page shows a bunch of blank tiles, some of which are labeled null. It should just show the default thumbnails that it shows without the extension installed. But, if I manually go to about:newtab, it takes me to the proper default new tab page. This is what it should do if New Tab Icons = Off.

• Address bar on new tab page shows moz-extension://d3cc787c-855f-41b8-8dc5-7610714a889e/newtab-page/newtab.html. It should be empty (and filled with placeholder text, as per the next bullet).

• No longer shows amusing placeholder text when address bar is empty
  this is the worst loss :(

• No longer shows mustachioed man icon in private browsing mode

Working:

• Mario sounds

I tried uninstalling the extension, restarting FF, and reinstalling the extension. That did not fix any of the above.

I miss my whimsical etherpad messages :(

[whispy]

It looks like these issues may be due to limitations in the web extensions rewrite. Is that correct? If so, it's unfortunate, as the best features:

1. passive rewrite of placeholder text in address bar
2. mustachioed man replacing private browsing creepy eyes

were lost. Requiring the user to type whimsy in the address bar to see the whimsical sayings sort of defeats the original purpose of the extension. Which, as I understood it, was to just have whimsical stuff around that the user would stumble upon while doing other tasks.

EDIT: Yeah, just read the changelog for the most recent version. It's really unfortunate that most of the original features are no longer possible.

Perhaps passive rewrite of placeholder text would be a great use case for WebExtensions Experimental APIs?

[bwinton]

I don't see the blank tiles with null. Are there any error messages in the Browser Console that might explain why you're seeing that?

Other than that, you're right, those are all webextensions API limitations. But, if you hover over the Whimsycorn button, we've also put the whimsical sayings there… (They change with every new tab opened, if I remember correctly.)

Thanks for the feedback, though!

[bwinton]

(Oh! And it looks like we could also put them in the title of the tab, which might help a bit…)

[strugee]

FYI, filed https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1391845 for the awesomebar placeholder thing.

[strugee]

@bwinton FYI, got invited to the WebExtensions triage meeting which will include the URL bar placeholder bug I linked to ^^^ above.

I can't make it as I have a W3C telecon and class at the same time but i wouldn't have much to say anyway since I was just reporting a deficiency from this project. Just thought I'd ping you in case you wanted to show up. (I'd reply on Bugzilla too but I'm currently locked out of my account... sigh)