A better system for managing "recommended preferences"

[myrdd]

Currently "DNS prefetch" and "Link prefetch" are handled by RP. In the current system there are three checkboxes for each on the "advanced settings" page:

• „Enabled“ simply toggles the corresponding setting itself
• „Disable on startup“ and „Restore default when RequestPolicy is uninstalled“ both toggles values RP itself has

The second and the third checkbox mean that we need two additional preferences for each setting. If we add a new "managed recommended preference", the number of those checkboxes will increase as well. However, I think the users commonly don't want to set those checkboxes for each "recommended preference", but rather in a more "high-level" manner.

So I'm proposing the following new system:

• RP will have a list of recommended settings, currently being "Link prefetch" and "DNS prefetch", and soon as well "Speculative pre-connections" (#628). Any pref + corresponding value can be added at any time to that list.
• The user can choose whether or not RP should manage those prefs for him.
  • If manage_recommended_prefs == true, RP will automatically manage any pref added to the list of recommended prefs.
  • Regardless of the manage_recommended_prefs setting the user can make exceptions. For example, one could say „I don't want RP to manage the recommended prefs by default, but please manage DNS prefetching.“
• There'll be more settings for special cases:
  • Consider the case where a pref is "managed", but it gets changed by some other addon, or by the user himself in about:config. Possible reactions could be: (a) „ignore“ (do nothing) or (b) „inform the user“ (with a popup or tab). In any case the pref will be newly set to the recommended value as soon as the browser gets restarted.
  • What should happen when when RP gets disabled or uninstalled? (a) „Reset all managed prefs to their default values“ (b) „keep the values“ (nothing will be reset) (c) „keep the values, but inform the user“ (d) „smartly decide“ (remember the values from the time before RP has been installed — difficult to implement and with possible corner cases)

More special cases, but not so important for now:

• What happens if a preference should be removed from the "recommended prefs" list?

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Please leave your comments, what you think about this concept.

[acrobat1]

I think that „inform the user“ will be good enough: it is IMO safe to assume that RP users will be skilled enough to take appropriate actions when such a warning is eventually triggered.

As for disabling vs. uninstalling, there may be a difference: when disabling, one may want to only disable all site-specific rules (leaving alone settings related to prefetching and the likes, as they usually should not break a website) in order to un-break a website, whilst upon uninstalling one may want to effectively revert all settings altered by RP.

[myrdd]

when disabling, one may want to only disable all site-specific rules

The site-specific rules will be deactivated as soon as the add-on is deactivated, whether "disabled" or "uninstalled".

whilst upon uninstalling one may want to effectively revert all settings altered by RP.

I think both cases are possible – the user could want to reset or not to reset the settings. I think a really nice solution would be an uninstallation page which allows to reset the recommended prefs; but I'm not sure if this is possible. The corresponding page has to be behind a data URI to ensure the page works even if RP is not active.

In any case, when the add-on gets disabled, the recommended prefs should not change.