Don't close forms that are not empty !

[GreggVan]

If a page has a form on it that is not empty - do not close it (throwing away all the data !)

thanks

[brcontainer]

@GreggVan it was not clear, but I will try to reproduce the problem. Grateful.

[marnovo]

+1 to the feature idea, but I'd like to add some extra info that may help on getting an implementation with less side effects.

A problem dear to many extensions as they evolve is that when they get features which rely on "checks" or "enhancements" over page elements, which then is done by tons of extensions on every page you have:

1. The extension may require additional access to page content, which not everyone would like to provide, and ideally this only is required for/breaks this extra functionality.
2. When doing such page checks and enhancements, the extensions may drive slowness and memory consumption, compounded: by interfacing/referencing page elements, the extension may be end up blocking garbage collection and releasing elements from memory, DOM nodes… and is not necessarily solved with plain reloading of the page. One example of what this could look like: https://github.com/angular/angular/issues/36590
3. Pinned tabs, complex web apps and Google docs are particularly prone to it as they have lots of dynamic elements, inputs and stay open for a while.
4. Offending extensions are not uncommon and may even be widely known and from commercial products and large companies. I found Google itself and password managers to be some of the them.
5. It is not trivial to prevent an offending extension not to run over a certain page: browsers themselves usually provide native site access whitelisting via URLs, but not blacklisting. So it falls into the extension developer to debug and fix the issue (not trivial), implement some sensible blacklisting, or very custom and convoluted "managed devices" policy implementations.
6. I found many extensions driving such behavior out when "debugging" memory leaks & CPU usage, and it is hard to nail down which extensions do it and to which pages, but once you do find them out and limit access to all pages, or even disable them completely, it's night and day.

Now, for a potential solution to implement the feature and avoid those pitfalls: preventing tab closure based on the widely supported browser native handling of document unload and hide events. In short, when hiding and/or unloading a document (tab closing, reloading, etc.) the browser goes through a loop where these can be paused or even cancelled; certain actions may be triggered, as auto-saving or user prompts "Changes you made may not be saved". So it's more coherent for users with native browser behavior, and may not need to read page elements or implement some input/form parsing.

Some references:

• https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/07/page-lifecycle-api
• https://html.spec.whatwg.org/#unloading-documents
• https://dev.to/chromiumdev/sure-you-want-to-leavebrowser-beforeunload-event-4eg5
• https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WindowEventHandlers/onbeforeunload

[GreggVan]

Excellent points

In fact - I usually don’t want to grant access by extensions. I have no idea what they are doing with the info

How about - you just make it so that - when you open a new tab that is a duplicate - it closes the NEW one and leaves the old one open— bringing it to the front.

That solves the “closing a form” problem. AND it makes it easy to find the tab in a jungle esp if on a different window

gregg

——————————— Professor, University of Maryland, College Park Director , Trace R&D Center, UMD Co-Founder Raising the Floor. http://raisingthefloor.org The Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure (GPII) http://GPII.net The Morphic project https://morphic.org

On Mar 3, 2021, at 8:23 AM, Marcelo Novaes notifications@github.com wrote:

+1 to the feature idea, but I'd like to add some extra info that may help on getting an implementation with less side effects.

A problem dear to many extensions as they evolve is that when they get features which rely on "checks" or "enhancements" over page elements, which then is done by tons of extensions on every page you have:

The extension may require additional access to page content, which not everyone would like to provide, and ideally this only is required for/breaks this extra functionality. When doing such page checks and enhancements, the extensions may drive slowness and memory consumption, compounded: by interfacing/referencing page elements, the extension may be end up blocking garbage collection and releasing elements from memory, DOM nodes… and is not necessarily solved with plain reloading of the page. One example of what this could look like: angular/angular#36590 https://github.com/angular/angular/issues/36590 Pinned tabs, complex web apps and Google docs are particularly prone to it as they have lots of dynamic elements, inputs and stay open for a while. Offending extensions are not uncommon and may even be widely known and from commercial products and large companies. I found Google itself and password managers to be some of the them. It is not trivial to prevent an offending extension not to run over a certain page: browsers themselves usually provide native site access whitelisting via URLs, but not blacklisting. So it falls into the extension developer to debug and fix the issue (not trivial), implement some sensible blacklisting, or very custom and convoluted "managed devices" policy implementations. I found many extensions driving such behavior out when "debugging" memory leaks & CPU usage, and it is hard to nail down which extensions do it and to which pages, but once you do find them out and limit access to all pages, or even disable them completely, it's night and day. Now, for a potential solution to implement the feature and avoid those pitfalls: preventing tab closure based on the widely supported browser native handling of document unload and hide events. In short, when hiding and/or unloading a document (tab closing, reloading, etc.) the browser goes through a loop where these can be paused or even cancelled; certain actions may be triggered, as auto-saving or user prompts "Changes you made may not be saved". So it's more coherent for users with native browser behavior, and may not need to read page elements or implement some input/form parsing.

Some references:

https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/07/page-lifecycle-api https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/07/page-lifecycle-api https://html.spec.whatwg.org/#unloading-documents https://html.spec.whatwg.org/#unloading-documents https://dev.to/chromiumdev/sure-you-want-to-leavebrowser-beforeunload-event-4eg5 https://dev.to/chromiumdev/sure-you-want-to-leavebrowser-beforeunload-event-4eg5 https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WindowEventHandlers/onbeforeunload https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WindowEventHandlers/onbeforeunload — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/brcontainer/prevent-duplicate-tabs/issues/12#issuecomment-789710753, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ACNGDXQQD6LLNUMUQF33CKDTBYZ5JANCNFSM4YCV5FAA.

[brcontainer]

I'm already doing experiments, but I believe that some fake forms (those that are not real forms, are solved via JavaScript only) will probably not be simple. Anyway, this will probably be a "beta" feature and I will make it available as soon as possible.

[dezza]

This is essential. Maybe you can take inspiration from duplicate-tabs-closer which does this, but has other issues which I can't remember off my mind.. but thats why I uninstalled it in the first place (unmaintained anyways).

Permissions to me, is a non-issue. In Firefox I use tons of advanced extensions with extensive permissions, I look at the source if in doubt. Same thing with phones, permissions are often interpreted as bad by everyone, but they have their legitimate uses.

From looking at your source it seems like you're rebuilding or sorting the whole tab collection? No? Is this why its reloading?

I'm not a javascript developer by far.. but I would love this functionality (I might attempt a PR).

[brcontainer]

@GreggVan @dezza @marnovo

Forgive my absence, these last few years have been complicated for everyone.

I recently returned to work on the addon, and I thought of a way that won't depend on hacks, which is actually very simple, using content_scripts and Event.isTrusted, the script sends a signal to the addon (it's a pretty basic example, I'll improve it, it's just illustrative):

var userFill = false;

function detectUserFill(e) {
    if (userFill || !e.isTrusted) return;

    userFill = true;

    chrome.runtime.sendMessage(null, 'form:filled', {});
}

addEventListener('input', detectUserFill, { capture: true });

And through the "sender" I get the tabId and add it to a temporary exception list in background.js:

var expcetionList = [];

chrome.runtime.onMessage.addListener((request, sender, sendResponse) => {
    if (request === 'form:filled') expcetionList.push(sender.tab.id);
});

That way we won't need to inject "beforeunload" into the pages.

Unfortunately it exists in a Firefox bug (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1810910), forcing me to postpone the migration to Manifest V3. The bug doesn't occur in MV2, so I made a polyfill that will keep the compatibility between V2 and V3, when the bug is fixed I will migrate.

Anyway it is still allowed to publish as MV2, so until next week I will have finished the tasks (https://github.com/brcontainer/prevent-duplicate-tabs/issues/1) and will publish them in the "stores".

[GreggVan]

thanks gregg

——————————— Professor, University of Maryland, College Park Founder and Director Emeritus , Trace R&D Center, UMD Co-Founder Raising the Floor. http://raisingthefloor.org The Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure (GPII) http://GPII.net The Morphic project https://morphic.org

On Apr 5, 2023, at 8:50 PM, Guilherme Nascimento @.***> wrote:

@GreggVan https://github.com/GreggVan @dezza https://github.com/dezza @marnovo https://github.com/marnovo Forgive my absence, these last few years have been complicated for everyone.

I recently returned to work on the addon, and I thought of a way that won't depend on hacks, which is actually very simple, using content_scripts and Event.isTrusted, the script sends a signal to the addon (it's a pretty basic example, I'll improve it, it's just illustrative):

var userFill = false;

function detectUserFill(e) { if (userFill || !e.isTrusted) return;

userFill = true;

chrome.runtime.sendMessage(null, 'form:filled', {});

}

w.addEventListener('input', detectUserFill, { capture: true }); And through the "sender" I get the tabId and add it to a temporary exception list in background.js:

var expcetionList = [];

chrome.runtime.onMessage.addListener((request, sender, sendResponse) => { if (request === 'form:filled') expcetionList.push(sender.tab.id); }); That way we won't need to inject "beforeunload" into the pages.

Infelizmente esbarrei em um bug do Firefox (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1810910), forcing me to postpone the migration to Manifest V3. The bug doesn't occur in MV2, so I made a polyfill that will keep the compatibility between V2 and V3, when the bug is fixed I will migrate.

Anyway it is still allowed to publish as MV2, so until next week I will have finished the tasks (#1 https://github.com/brcontainer/prevent-duplicate-tabs/issues/1) and will publish them in the "stores".

— Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/brcontainer/prevent-duplicate-tabs/issues/12#issuecomment-1498452837, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ACNGDXTIDDBCXSZ37ANWNHTW7Y4SBANCNFSM4YCV5FAA. You are receiving this because you were mentioned.