Manifest Author different between Chrome&Firefox

[Malix-Labs]

MDN URL

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/manifest.json/author

What specific section or headline is this issue about?

Manifest Author field breaking change between v2 and v3

What information was incorrect, unhelpful, or incomplete?

Author field changed in Manifest v3

What did you expect to see?

A correct Manifest v3 Author field

Do you have any supporting links, references, or citations?

https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/manifest/author

Do you have anything more you want to share?

No response

MDN metadata

Page report details

* Folder: `en-us/mozilla/add-ons/webextensions/manifest.json/author` * MDN URL: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/manifest.json/author * GitHub URL: https://github.com/mdn/content/blob/main/files/en-us/mozilla/add-ons/webextensions/manifest.json/author/index.md * Last commit: https://github.com/mdn/content/commit/d86e14de2e66319fc0a0ec0539a05400dea5a453 * Document last modified: 2023-03-07T05:20:12.000Z

[rebloor]

@Malix-off please provide more information, what breaking change are you observing?

[Josh-Cena]

@rebloor I believe it's because the Chrome docs say authors is an object with an email key but MDN says authors is a string.

[Malix-Labs]

Exactly

[Rob--W]

In Chrome the expected value is an object with the email property.

In Firefox the expected value is a string denoting the name. It is worth noting that a non-string value such as an object does not prevent the extension from working. Instead, a non-fatal warning is logged to the console. An extension author can put the name string in the developer manifest key (which overrides the author key) if they wish to provide the information for both browsers.

Let's document this more clearly.

FYI: The "warning not error" aspect of the behaviour was intentionally introduced to support the object value, in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1313567

This inconsistency is also a subject of standardization discussion, at https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/67

[Malix-Labs]

@Rob--W

In Chrome the expected value is an object with the email property.

Maybe the field should be something like chromeAuthor | firefoxAuthor (or something similar then

[carlosjeurissen]

@Rob--W Interestingly enough it seems both Chrome and the Chrome Web Store do not throw a warning or an error with extensions having their manifest author value set to a string. So not sure what the breaking aspect is?

[Malix-Labs]

Maybe because that's to keep compatibility with chrome manifest v2 extensions