Custom user menus and higher privileges environment

[GoogleCodeExporter]

What steps will reproduce the problem?
1. in the custom menu editor, it is not possible for end-user to call functions 
like prompt(), alert()

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?
Because of the evalInSandbox(), an exception is thrown with "Permission denied".

This issue is created to track changes and deliveries to create what follows:
- Separated plugin to enable custom menu with higher privileges
- Changes in the menu creation window, to insert addition options to choose the 
execution level. evalInSandbox() or eval()

Original issue reported on code.google.com by aurelien...@gmail.com on 13 Jun 2010 at 2:37

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Original comment by aurelien...@gmail.com on 13 Jun 2010 at 11:48

• Added labels: Priority-Critical
• Removed labels: Priority-Medium

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Using evalInSandbox() to evaluate user's script (aka menus) breaks calls to 
alert() and prompt() functions (and others). Even if the security is now 
stronger, the user experience is lowered by this problem.
At this point, there's 2 possibilities that need to be studied :
1 - having .xul and methods to replace/mimic broken functions and then expose 
them to the end-user
2 - as mentionned above, split the menu into a separate add-in for mpm. This 
could allow higher privileges execution, but may expose the user to potential 
vulnerabilities (if any).

* Currently, the point 2, is doable, but requires some times to implement. But 
I don't want to take any risks with the security. Though, the user experience 
could be greater with user supplied scripts. This could allow scripts to call 
commands to burn playlists, export the current playing song to irc or 
twitter... Also, if a separated extension is distributed, it will have to be 
maintained and users should be prompted to update it from time to time.

* The problem with point 1 is that I don't know how to get values in return 
from a xul window, but this should be doable. Also, it would be only a 
work-around and there would be no possibilities to improve the user experience.

Original comment by aurelien...@gmail.com on 14 Jun 2010 at 1:41