Alexei Reporter
	Description • 6 years ago

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/67.0.3396.87 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

The Recent tab of the file picker does not display an intuitive list of recently accessed files and folders. This is an issue on Ubuntu 14.04 and 17.10. It might be an issue on other platforms. The Recent tab does not have this issue in Chrome or in the Files Ubuntu app.

Here is my use case, made more difficult on Firefox:
1. Start the browser with a fresh profile. No problem in Firefox or Chrome.
2. Load an extension from source in developer mode. No problem in either browser until we get to the file picker dialog. Under the Recent tab, Chrome displays a sensible list of recently accessed files and folders. Firefox displays only files, and I don't know what logic is used, but it's not helpful.


Actual results:

The Recent file picker tab appears to display a confusing assemblage of files, some recently used, some not, but most likely missing the file you actually want.


Expected results:

I expect to see a recently used set of files AND folders, ordered by recency of use.

	Daniel Bodea [:danibodea]
	Comment 1 • 6 years ago

Hi Alexel,

Some information is a bit ambiguous. Please provide us with detailed information about the following part from description: "Load an extension from source in developer mode."

Two different cases.
1. Are you using the option to "Install add-ons from file..." from the "about:addons" page?
2. Are you using the option to "Load Temporary Add-ons" from the "about:debugging#addons" page?

I will assume that the flow you took is the first one because that is the one where the "Add-ons" file type is automatically selected at the bottom of the page (Entitled "Select add-on to install"). This causes the File Manager (File Picker) to only display folders and add-on file types.

In contrary, if you take the  second flow, a different File Manager (Picker) will be displayed (Entitled "Select manifest File or Package (.xpi)"), so those file types will be displayed.

If I understood incorrectly, please try to provide simpler steps to reproduce and actual/expected info.
If you think this issue is not valid, please tell us so we can close it.

Thank you for your contribution!

	Alexei Reporter
	Comment 2 • 6 years ago

I'm using the second option, Load Temporary Add-on from about:debugging. Sorry it wasn't clear.

It sounds like the file picker is customized based on the workflow. I suggest in this issue this customization is frustrating for at least some users since it seems to interfere with the Recent file picker tab, at least on Linux.

	Alexei Reporter
	Comment 3 • 6 years ago

Could the difference in file picker behavior be explained by the fact that in my original "load extension for source" scenario the file picker is for a manifest JSON file on Firefox and a folder on Chrome?

This then might be a (Ubuntu? Gnome?) Linux bug where the Recent tab doesn't work well when the file picker is set to look for files only.

	Daniel Bodea [:danibodea]
	Comment 4 • 6 years ago

I am setting the Component as (Firefox) Extension Compatibility and let developers decide whether this is a valid issue or not.

Thank you, Alexel.

	Andrew Swan [:aswan]
	Comment 5 • 6 years ago

I don't think we do anything special for this file picker that would affect what is displayed in the recent files section.  But over to the component where the picker is created...