New API: Open Shortcut Setting

[hanguokai]

The Problem

Take Chrome as an example, the shortcut page is chrome://extensions/shortcuts, which centralizes all extensions' shortcuts settings. We need to let users locate to current extension (not other extensions) in this page. Assuming that the user has dozens of extensions installed, if we cannot directly locate to current extension, then the user will spend the effort to find this extension first. Assuming that if the extension supports 30 shortcuts, it is also necessary to directly locate to a specified shortcut (not other shortcuts) in this extension.

The Proposal

/**
 * Open the browser extension shortcut page and locate to (scroll to):
 * 1. if no name parameter, locate to the beginning of this extension.
 * 2. if specify the name, locate to the specified shortcut of this extension.
 * The name parameter is `Command.name` of a shortcut.
 */
browser.commands.openShortcut( name ?: string );

[Rob--W]

Originally reported at #300, but split off it.

I posted the following reply at #300 (comment) :

There is already precedent for opening the extension settings page via runtime.openOptionsPage. Something similar for shortcuts (provided that the browser supports it) is reasonable. FYI Firefox supports the commands.update API to update a shortcut, but it cannot do the kind of conflict resolution that is available at the shortcuts UI page: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1654403

[hanguokai]

In addition, for open shortcuts, not just to open a page, but to navigate to a specific shortcut in that page. The use case is user click the edit button from an extension page, then go to there for this shortcut.

[Rob--W]

There was also a feature request for a method to open the shortcuts management page from an extension, at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1538451 . Someone has provided a patch there, so I'd like to discuss the shape of the API at the next meeting.

[oliverdunk]

We had a very similar issue back in 2021 that we may want to close given this updated proposal: #126

[zombie]

Bikeshed: openShortcutsConfig

[oliverdunk]

Chrome is supportive of this capability. We would like to have some further discussions about the namespace (runtime vs commands) before making a decision, since we're not sure what our preference is yet.

[mdmower]

I'm in favor of runtime as I don't see the need to disallow this feature if an extension doesn't provide commands of its own.