Treestyletab: "about:treestyletab-group" shortcut is broken

[kulmegil]

"about:treestyletab-group" shortcut url, used to create temporary groups, stopped working in version 2.5.2. Fx is returning invalid URL page. It's working properly in v2.5.1.

Issue affects creating groups using "about:treestyletab-group" shortcut only. Groups created when opening multiple bookmarks or when restoring session will work properly.

[piroor]

See also discussion on #2001

[Arkanosis]

Especially this comment: https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/issues/2001#issuecomment-414672153

I'm using TST 2.5.4, FF 62.0, Ubuntu 16.04 and I have the exact same behavior: the about:treestyletab-group doesn't work in new (blank) tabs, but it does work if a page is already loaded in the tab (regular website, or about:addon, whatever…).

[kulmegil]

It appears it works only for first new (blank) tab. Sometimes with 2 new tabs if I'm testing with new profiles. Sooo... maybe I have jumped into conclusion it was fine on v2.5.1.
IT DOES NOT.

What really confuses me about this issue is that it just stopped working one day.
Without major Fx nor extension update.
And it's broken ever since...
whenever I use older versions of FX or extension.
I just don't get it.

[kulmegil]

After some digging I found that what appears to be breaking affecting it, is Firefox's new tab preloading mechanism. When I disable it "about:treestyletab-group" works as expected.

about:config >> browser.newtab.preload = false

[irvinm]

@kulmegil is there more to discuss on this topic? If not, can you close this item?

[irvinm]

@piroor can you close this one? No updates since September 2018.

[piroor]

There looks nothing I can do. Currently Firefox doesn't provide ability to implement stable short URI with addons, so sadly I have no better idea anymore. Thus I close this for now.

[HighCommander4]

Currently Firefox doesn't provide ability to implement stable short URI with addons

Is there is a Firefox bug tracking this?

[piroor]

Not exact one, but looks related:

1322304 - Allow vanity URLs for WebExtension pages
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1322304
1271553 - Add ability to implement programmable custom protocol handler
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1271553

[kulmegil]

Sorry I forgot to comment on this... but yeah it looks like nothing can be done on extension side right now.

[piroor]

With the commit f39764104ac2fdebb1c543533718de514ef68c99 I've introduced a new custom URI like ext+treestyletab:group. It should replace the old about:treestyletab-group, and the new ext+treestyletab:group should work more stably.

[irvinm]

@piroor is the change in favico by design? Not a big deal, but just thought the original favico was cleaner.

Also, beyond the initial text, are the options\behaviors the same between the two methods?

[piroor]

@irvinm It is not intentional, and doesn't happen on my environment. But the commit 39c8d3c may affect to this problem.

[irvinm]

@piroor thanks. I upgraded to 3.1.7 and am only seeing the expected favicon now.

Does the new method not support setting the title directly any more?

Example:
about:treestyletab-group?New%20Group ... loads and sets the title to "New Group".
ext+treestyletab:group?New%20Group ... doesn't work or even load. (Obviously you can create the generic group tab and just rename the title to "New Group" once the page loads)

[piroor]

Sorry for this delay... URI like ext+treestyletab:group?New%20Group should be supported with the commit eac88ca.