Fix the new history sidebar
As part of the sidebar revamp, the history panel (shortcut Ctrl+H) was updated.
Right now in Tor Browser nightly, the new sidebar panel is broken and empty because it relies on the firefoxview component, which is not part of our build.
But this is what it should look like from Firefox:
Screenshots
Some problems:
- Fox mascot.
- Link to change history settings, which is not usually encouraged.
- Language is out of place in Tor Browser context. "Protecting your privacy is at the heart of what we do". Sounds like double-speak for data collection, haha. I'm not sure why Firefox is drawing attention to "privacy" in this section, unless it is meant to be in relation to Firefox sync.
- Technically, this feature seems to rely on the firefoxview component, which would not be simple to resolve.
Most users will have zero history, so this is an unnecessary component for them.
But some users can enable the history feature. And it may be more prominent in future Mullvad Browser releases.
Some options on what to do:
- Drop the history sidebar entirely. A user can still see their history in the archaic "Library" window (Ctrl+Shift+H, or History > Show all history). The Ctrl+H command opens this window instead. May break some user's flow.
- Graft in the old history panel in its place. I.e the one that shows with Ctrl+H in Tor Browser 14.5. It is still used when the user has the sidebar switched off, so we could expose its content in both cases instead.
- Modify the new panel. Keeping the parts we like, replacing some parts, and dropping the rest. Either we will need to carefully re-add parts of the firefoxview component, or we can replace it with our own module.
I think realistically, we can go with option 1 or 2 for the 15.0 release. And maybe option 3 in future, if we think it is worth it or when upstream drops the old stuff.