New Module Proposal: Remote New Tab Page

[Olivier Yiptong]

Hi everyone,

I'd like to propose a new module: the Remote NewTab Page.

We're building a remotely hosted piece of Firefox real estate. This is breaking new ground for Firefox in general because:

1) It is a highly visible, therefore valuable, piece of real estate
2) We are figuring out what it means to have remote and unprivileged content replacing chrome
3) We are an at-scale consumer of web technologies from the platform teams

It includes the code and automation that makes up the Remote New Tab Page, as well as the bits in Firefox that allow it to work, most of it being in /browser/components/newtab.

Name: Remote NewTab Page
Description: Remotely-hosted new tab page
Owners: Olivier Yiptong
Peers: Marcos Caceres, Marina Samuel
Source Dir(s):
browser/components/newtab
https://github.com/mozilla/remote-newtab

Bugzilla Components(s):
Remote Newtab

Thanks,

- Olivier

+1 (647) 299-6074

[Ehsan Akhgari]

Doesn't this fall under the Firefox module? Firefox module stopped
having submodules a long time ago.

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[Olivier Yiptong]

The non-Firefox part of this module proposal lives outside of Firefox and would be updated out-of-band from Firefox.

Basically, except for the parts where we are tethered to Firefox to, this web application is independent of Firefox.
This opens up possibilities... who knows, we may make a Firefox newtab for Chrome.

[Ehsan Akhgari]

On 2015-10-28 4:26 PM, Olivier Yiptong wrote:
> The non-Firefox part of this module proposal lives outside of Firefox and would be updated out-of-band from Firefox.

The location of the source code is not the important issue, IMO. So far
at least the Firefox module has covered all user-facing aspects of the
browser, and the new tab page is no different. Where it is hosted and
how it's implemented should not affect what module governs it.

You can document the knowledge of the proposed owners and peers by
adding them as Firefox peers focusing on specific parts of the browser
code. I think for all intents and purposes the end result is the same
for you. For example, I'm a Firefox peer, but I usually only review
private browsing specific code.

If you think a new module is really warranted here, you should probably
get dcamp's green light since this is really breaking an existing part
of a module into a new module. Also as I mentioned before, as a pure
matter of technicality, if you want to create a new module you should
figure out how you'd do that with Firefox not having submodules. The
new module would need a home. :-)

> Basically, except for the parts where we are tethered to Firefox to, this web application is independent of Firefox.
> This opens up possibilities... who knows, we may make a Firefox newtab for Chrome.

The awesome upcoming development will hopefully happen no matter what
module governs the code. In the current Firefox module, individual
peers make decisions governing their own areas and I trust that the same
system can give you enough altitude to explore the future of the module
as you'd like. :-)

Cheers,
Ehsan

[Olivier Yiptong]

> If you think a new module is really warranted here, you should probably get dcamp's green light since this is really breaking an existing part of a module into a new module. Also as I mentioned before, as a pure matter of technicality, if you want to create a new module you should figure out how you'd do that with Firefox not having submodules. The new module would need a home. :-)

Thanks for the feedback. I didn't know Firefox didn't have submodules anymore.
For now, we're pretty much tethered to Firefox and as such, perhaps no new module is warranted yet.

I'll chat with dcamp.

- Olivier

+1 (647) 299-6074

[Dave Townsend]

On Wed, Oct 28, 2015 at 6:05 PM, Ehsan Akhgari <ehsan....@gmail.com>

wrote:

> On 2015-10-28 4:26 PM, Olivier Yiptong wrote:
>
>> The non-Firefox part of this module proposal lives outside of Firefox and
>> would be updated out-of-band from Firefox.
>>
>
> The location of the source code is not the important issue, IMO. So far
> at least the Firefox module has covered all user-facing aspects of the
> browser, and the new tab page is no different. Where it is hosted and how
> it's implemented should not affect what module governs it.
>

This is not true. Many user-facing pieces of the browser are owned by the
Toolkit module for example. Even then pieces of the UI are owned by yet
other modules, like the add-ons discovery page in the add-ons manager which
is owned by the AMO module. Hello is another example of a standalone module
for a piece of the UI.

> You can document the knowledge of the proposed owners and peers by adding
> them as Firefox peers focusing on specific parts of the browser code. I
> think for all intents and purposes the end result is the same for you. For
> example, I'm a Firefox peer, but I usually only review private browsing
> specific code.
>
> If you think a new module is really warranted here, you should probably
> get dcamp's green light since this is really breaking an existing part of a
> module into a new module. Also as I mentioned before, as a pure matter of
> technicality, if you want to create a new module you should figure out how
> you'd do that with Firefox not having submodules. The new module would
> need a home. :-)
>

I'll speak for dcamp and say that since the main pieces of this code live
outside the tree that the Firefox peers generally work in then it would
make some sense to have a standalone module for it. Happy for Firefox to
still own the pieces that live in Firefox if that makes sense.

Mostly though as you say whichever route we take it shouldn't stop work
getting done. Honestly with the scale we're operating at now I'm not
entirely sure out current module system makes sense anymore but that's a
different discussion.

[dc...@mozilla.com]

I talked this over with Olivier,

I'm OK with the repository implementing the new tab page being its own module.

I will retain ownership of the related browser/ code, but grant peerhood to the best folks to review that area. I'll assert that the ownership of Firefox allows me the option to not make use of this new tab page module, and therefore I think that at a high level ehsan's concerns about the Firefox module ownership of frontend should be addressed.

Thanks,
-dave

[dc...@mozilla.com]

On Friday, November 13, 2015 at 5:48:07 PM UTC-5, dc...@mozilla.com wrote:
> I talked this over with Olivier,
>
> I'm OK with the repository implementing the new tab page being its own module.
>
> I will retain ownership of the related browser/ code, but grant peerhood to the best folks to review that area. I'll assert that the ownership of Firefox allows me the option to not make use of this new tab page module, and therefore I think that at a high level ehsan's concerns about the Firefox module ownership of frontend should be addressed.

Err, let me be more clear: I consider Ehsan's concerns to have been addressed.