I noticed some Firefox extensions when installed will open up a page once you restart the browser, for example the StumbleUpon toolbar.
This is useful to show update notes and give the user some tutorial type information.
How do you go about opening a new page in a Firefox add-on the first time the user restarts the browser after install?
Though there might be a better way, I'm not aware of it...
You can use the preferences system to track whether it's a first run/update
Check if the preference exists, if not, open the page, create the pref with current extension version number.
If the preference exists, check it against the current extension version number, if they are different, assume it's an update and open the page. (assuming you want the page opened every time it's updated as well)
var prefs = Components.classes["#mozilla.org/preferences-service;1"]
.getService(Components.interfaces.nsIPrefService);
prefs.QueryInterface(Components.interfaces.nsIPrefBranch2);
if ((prefs.getPrefType("extensions.yourextensionhere.yourprerference") == PREF_INVALID)
|| (prefs.getCharPref("extensions.yourextensionhere.yourprerference") != this.version)) {
//open page and...
prefs.setCharPref("extensions.yourextensionhere.yourprerference",this.version)
}
EDIT.. version check used == instead of != as it should have
I have not worked directly with firefox extensions, but I would imagine something along the lines of storing a flag(boolean value) in persistent memory (however you store user preferences). When the browser starts the first time after the install, the flag would not be set, so you display the help page and set the flag. Next time firefox restarts, the flag will already have been set, so you don't open the help page.
If you wanted it to show a page every time the extension was updated, then store the version instead of a boolean, and on each startup check if the current version is greater than that of the stored one.
Related
I created a login sequence and my selectors for the input email, password, click login and element exists are valid. But only when I have the Internet Explorer page open on the website I'm working with.
I did that sequence again, and I ran it, initially it worked but when I ran the hole project it broke again, I tried "repair" and "indicate", I tried to eliminate the title but nothing is working.
As far as I can see, you are using selector attribute:
"title=ACME System 1 - Dashboard"
Try using a wildcard: title='ACME System 1*', so it can work when you leave the dashboard.
This worked for me when I took those UiPath Academy courses.
In order to automate tasks within a browser with UiPath, the browser must be open. There is an activity called Open Browser that's included in the default activities for every project. You need to add this activity to the beginning of your sequence and pass in the appropriate parameters, (ie. URL, browser type) you can then pass the outputted browser variable to an attach browser sequence and execute your browser automation acivities within that.
Browser activity sceenshot
In addition, the selector that you have shared does not look like a stable selector. There may be other 'H1' elements on the screen that will cause your automation to fail. I would use the UI explorer to help you build a better, more stable selector.
Did you initially use IE to indicate screen elements and then changed the BrowserType property to use a different browser? Please share the sequence to suggest you a fix for your issue.
I would also suggest you to modify the selector to 'title='ACME System *'.
In order for selector to work the application needs to be open and the desired element needs to be available. So when you close the browser the selector disappears.
You may consider swithching to 'Modern Design Experience' and use 'Use Application/Browser' scope to make this more intuitive, and it will also automatically open the browser for you if it is closed.
I am developing firefox extension.
Problem is that when i open second window (Ctrl + N) my extension has new state for new opened window.
If I reacts or changes on second window it never affect on first window or vice versa.
Ex
Installed extension on Firefox
first window opened. My extension proper functioning, change state, login, view data etc
then opened second. My extension goes new state I cant get previous states (first window states).
How can maintain same state between first and second or other firefox opened windows.?
Am I correct to assume you're developing a XUL overlay add-on, and not an SDK add-on?
One way to share state between windows is to use Javascript code modules. A code module will only be loaded once (unless explicitly unloaded) and therefore will expose the same data to multiple windows. Be sure to read the "Sharing objects using code modules"., However, please note that therefore when closing a window, any state associated with it and stored within the code module must be cleaned up, or would leak otherwise.
If you're using the SDK instead, your main.js module is already the equivalent of a code module. Content scripts may use message passing to store and retrieve state from your module.
I want to automatically count number of tabs that are open in Firefox so I can track this over time. It is not enough to get an add-on that displays current number in the browser.
From .sqlite tables Firefox saves for each profile I have not been able to decipher any table of currently opened tabs. I also looked for a column in the history table that tells whether page is currently open or not. Is this information available in the databases at all? If so, where is it stored? If not, how do add-ons like Tab Counter find this number?
Open the about:telemetry link in Firefox and click scalars tab from the sidebar menu. Alternatively, opening about:telemetry#scalars-tab_search=tab will take you directly to the scalars tab.
The browser.engagement.max_concurrent_tab_count key will show the number of tabs active for the session, but does not update when a tab is closed. Instead, if you want to update this value you will need to restart your browser.
The browser.engagement.tab_open_event_count key shows the current number of open tabs at a given time and is updated dynamically.
Online
Within a running Firefox session, it's easy to extract the data using the Mozilla Add-on API. I wrote a simple Tab Count Logger extension that does this, and saves the count to an SQLite database.
The relevant part of the code is:
const tabs = require("sdk/tabs");
const windows = require("sdk/windows").browserWindows;
console.log("Windows: " + windows.length + "; tabs: " + tabs.length);
Offline
Opened tabs are stored in sessionstore.js in the profile directory, not in SQLite. This file is JSON. A script to count tabs:
#!/usr/bin/env python3
# Count open tabs from a firefox profile
# Working directory is the root of a Firefox profile.
import json
j = json.loads(open("sessionstore.js", 'rb').read().decode('utf-8'))
def info_for_tab(tab):
try:
return (tab['entries'][0]['url'], tab['entries'][0]['title'])
except IndexError:
return None
except KeyError:
return None
def tabs_from_windows(window):
return list(map(info_for_tab, window['tabs']))
all_tabs = list(map(tabs_from_windows, j['windows']))
print('Statistics: {wins} windows, {tabs} total tabs'.format(wins=len(all_tabs), tabs=sum(map(len, all_tabs))))
After having saved this to ~/bin/firefox_count_tabs, you can get the information for all your profiles as in:
for i in ~/.mozilla/firefox/*.*; do test -d $i && (echo "== $i =="; cd $i; ~/bin/firefox_count_tabs ); done
The count will be shown on the exit confirm dialog - if you hadn't disable that 😂️
update 2022-11-02: only when you have only one window
#Xidus: History and bookmarks are stored in the places.sqlite. You cannot determine tabs and windows information here.tabs and windows information are stored in the sessionstore.js file.You can refer this links:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/sessionstore.js
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=622036&start=60&p=12098147#p12098147
You can count tabs in the Browser Console (not Web Console) with:
gBrowser.tabs.length
The Browser Console is disabled by default. To enable it you can either:
Tick the option "Enable browser chrome and add-on debugging toolboxes" in the Web Developer Tools settings.
Go to about:config and search for devtools.chrome.enabled, and toggle it to true.
After that look for Browser Console in the More tools menu, or open the Developer Console with [CTRL]+[SHIFT]+J, and you can now enter the above.
option-1
option-2
[CTRL]+[SHIFT]+J
Our continuous integration process uses Selenium, and twice in the last few months it has been knocked out of action thanks to firefox updating itself (either on developer machines or the CI server).
We have therefore installed the previous firefox version alongside the later one (this time in a directory called firefox-16), until Selenium catches up.
The problem is, the app.update.auto setting (in about:config) is set to true by default - meaning that sooner or later it will update itself to 17 and selenium will break. We therefore installed an all-no-update.js file in the /usr/lib/firefox-16/defaults/pref folder containing
user_pref("app.update.auto", false);
which (according to MDN) should override any other values. Unfortunately it doesn't work - the about:config page still shows auto-update as app.update.auto as true. This MDN page says:
All Mozilla-based applications read (application directory)/defaults/preferences/*.js
but unfortunately that doesn't work either - the value stays unchanged.
I've trawled the Bugzilla database but can't find anything relevant (other than the fact that an all.js file gets deleted by an upgrade so be sure to use all-*.js file).
Does anyone know enough about the workings of Mozilla Firefox to tell me how to set this preference value? (please don't say "click on the about:config page" - it needs to be automatically to ensure the build is repeatable and stable).
Thanks, James
Edit:
Sorry if the above isn't clear: I can create default preferences, for newly created profiles, just fine. But as users already have a profile this won't have any effect. I could possibly create a new profile on every machine, for every user, that has this setting disabled - but it is a lot of overhead. Sysadmins all over the world must be using this functionality somehow, surely: a way to override a given preference with a centrally-set one?
The most likely reason is using user_pref() function - as the name already says, this one is reserved for user's preferences (in user's profile), default preferences should use pref() instead.
You also have to consider that whatever you put into this directory are default preferences, they can be overridden in the browser profile (in the file prefs.js there). If you aren't using a clean profile the preference can already be set there and the default won't have any effect then.
For reference: A brief guide to Mozilla preferences
From MDN: Enterprise Deployment (Configuration)
Some config items require lockPref to be set, such as app.update.enabled. It will not work if it set with just pref.
Suspect this may apply to app.update.auto as well. Although I can find no obvious (i.e. named update) configuration option in about:config that is specific to any given add-on. So I don't even know if the per-add-on setting is a pref?
When my add-on installs it needs to prompt the user to get a username or something like that. After that it stores it and shouldn't ask again. Where would I place this prompt? install.rdf? browser.xul?
There is no explicit mechanism to run code when the extension installs - you should simply do it when your extension runs for the first time. The easiest approach would be checking whether the user name is already set up. If it is not - show the prompt.
It is not recommended to show a modal dialog, those are extremely annoying to users, especially when they suddenly appear during Firefox start-up. You should instead open your page in a tab. A slight complication: Firefox might be restoring a previous session when it starts up. If you open your page too early the session restore mechanism might replace it. So you should wait for the sessionstore-windows-restored notification, something like this should work:
Components.utils.import("resource://gre/modules/XPCOMUtils.jsm");
Components.utils.import("resource://gre/modules/Services.jsm");
var observer = {
observe: function(subject, topic, data)
{
Services.obs.removeObserver("sessionstore-windows-restored", this);
var browser = window.getBrowser();
browser.loadOneTab("chrome://...", {inBackground: false});
},
QueryInterface: XPCOMUtils.generateQI([
Components.interfaces.nsIObserver,
Components.interfaces.nsISupportsWeakReference
])
};
Services.obs.addObserver("sessionstore-windows-restored", observer, true);
A final complication is that your code is probably running from a browser window overlay - meaning that there will be multiple instances of your code if the session restored contains more than one window. You probably want the code above to run only once however rather than opening your first-run page in every browser window. So you will have to coordinate somehow, maybe via preferences. A slightly more complicated but better solution would be having a JavaScript code module in your extension - code modules are only loaded once so you wouldn't have a coordination issue there.
Try using an addonlistener https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Addons/Add-on_Manager/AddonListener#onInstalling%28%29
Or by using the preferences: https://stackoverflow.com/a/958944/1360985