Right-click page context menu option disappears after some time, in Firefox

[joelpurra]

Expected behavior

Talkie's context menu item, shown when right-clicking selected text, is available when the user wants to use it.

Actual behavior

• In Firefox, the Talkie: <selected text here> menu item seems to disappear after a while.
• Using the browser bar button still works.

Steps to reproduce behavior

• Leave Firefox running for some time, Talkie disappears from the right-click menu.
• After how long is unclear -- hours?
• Might depend on external factors.
  • System resource usage/load?
  • System sleep mode?
  • Certain websites/website features?
  • Other extensions?
• If extension debugging is enabled, this does not seem to occur -- even after days.
  • Makes debugging hard.
  • Can logs still be extracted without debug mode?

System information

• Your browser: Firefox
• Your browser version: v66.0.5 (64-bit)
• Your operating system: macOS
• Your operating system version: v10.14.4 (18E226)

Might very well happen on other operating systems.

Additional information

The same, or similar problems, have been reported by users in recent weeks. Perhaps an issue with recent Firefox versions?

[joelpurra]

Perhaps it's related to the persistent setting? Firefox only handles persistent pages, thus ignoring the setting. Event pages (non-persistent) is the recommendation for Chromium. Talkie was built to be non-persistent and unloadable, as it should save system resources.

• https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/user_interface/Context_menu_items
• https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/manifest.json/background
• https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data/blob/28b3a7726786a9d1007b8be1659c6bac24311b60/webextensions/manifest/background.json#L56-L63
• https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/background_pages

Found an MDN page regarding testing/debugging persistent features. It doesn't mention context menus though, so unsure if it applies. Any other ideas?

• https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/Testing_persistent_and_restart_features