Side View sidebar no longer automatically opens after extension installation

[acornestean]

[Affected versions]:
Firefox Release 129.0.2
Firefox Beta 130.0
Firefox Nightly 131.0a1

[Affected Platforms]:
Windows, MacOS, Linux

[Steps to reproduce]:
Install Side View version 0.6.5727 (based on the current master branch https://github.com/mozilla/side-view/releases/tag/0.5rc7) via about:debbugging
OR
via “Install Add-on From File” in Add-ons Manager (after setting xpinstall.signatures.required to false in about:config)

[Expected result]:
The Side View sidebar should automatically open after the extension is installed as it does in the case of the currently available version on AMO.

[Actual result]:
The Side View sidebar no longer automatically opens when the extension is installed

[jaredhirsch]

Thanks for filing this.

I dug into the code a little bit, and it looks like this change was intended in #337 and #338, but I think that may have been because we were doing a shield study (an ancient ancestor of nimbus experiments) to vary the onboarding.

I'm not sure I like this change better, because it buries the onboarding behind several clicks (click addons toolbar button -> click sidebar menu item -> finally the onboarding doorhanger appears), so I might revert back to auto-opening the sidebar and showing onboarding there, if it's very easy.

[acornestean]

I initially filed this bug as I was surprised the sidebar did not open after the extension installation as in the case of the currently available extension on AMO.

However, after some more thinking I consider the new implementation could be more appropriate as the onboarding carousel displayed when clicking the extension button does a better job at explaining what the extension does, as opposed to the sidebar “Welcome” screen only displaying a link with a tutorial, which nonetheless can be helpful if users can actually reach it in the new version of the extension (since it is also buried behind opening the sidebar via either the “Show sidebars” toolbar button which has to be manually put on the toolbar from the “Customize Firefox” settings page or by opening, for example, the Bookmarks sidebar via CTRL+B and then selecting Side View from the top dropdown menu). Moreover, the “Welcome” screen in the sidebar is no longer shown if a user manages to open a page in the Side View sidebar before it gets a chance to be displayed.

The way I see it, there could be 3 possible solutions to this:

1. Keep the onboarding in the extension popup, but add the tutorial link in there somewhere in case the information relayed in onboarding is not sufficient.
   In this case the “welcome” screen in the sidebar becomes obsolete and there should no longer be a need to open the sidebar automatically on extension installation. This would also mean scrapping the “welcome” screen from the sidebar entirely.

OR

2. Move the entire new onboarding experience (the new onboarding carousel from the extension popup) in the sidebar which should now open automatically on extension install, but remove the onboarding carousel from the extension popup.

OR

3. Revert to auto-opening the sidebar and showing the “welcome” screen there, with a tutorial link, as you proposed. It would be as it works currently in the version from AMO, minus the “A Firefox Test Pilot Experiment”. This should be the simplest implementation.

[rpl]

@jaredhirsch it looks like sidebar_action.open_at_install is currently set to false in the manifest template:

side-view/addon/manifest.json.tmpl

Line 31 in e241634

"open_at_install": false,

I haven't double-checked if that is also the case in the manifest.json generated from the template, but that manifest property set to false would be likely related to this issue (and if it was opened automatically despite open_at_install is set to false may have been actually a bug and the previous behavior a side-effect of that bug).