Gecko:Moving Plugins To Content

bug 90268

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=88998 <-- seems to have a partial patch?

Christian Biesinger <cbiesinger@web.de> will probably work on this

Rationale

• Plugins should not get reloaded by reframes, e.g. when the display: of a node changes.
• Plugins that have no frames should still be instantiated

The Plan

Steps:

• Move nsPluginInstanceOwner to its own file
  • Make it implement a new interface nsPIPluginInstanceOwner which has all the methods needed for objectframe<->instanceowner communication
  • Extend nsIObjectFrame with methods the instance owner needs to call (if any)
  • Make the instance owner own a content node rather than a frame (probably)
  • Provide method NS_NewPluginInstanceOwner or something. also takes care of Init
• Move that file to content (or, directly add it in content)
• ...
• Create the owner on the content node. Provide a method on nsIObjectFrame to tell it that the plugin instance owner changed. provide a method to get the current instance owner. (Similar to how nsIImageLoadingContent works)

• I considered making an nsMacPluginInstanceOwner, subclass of nsPluginInstanceOwner. All those #ifdef XP_MAC code would move there. Thoughts?

Plugins without frames

What should happen with plugins that have no frame?

Possibilities, that I can think of right now:

• They have a widget that's clipped to an empty rect
• They have no widget. NPP_SetWindow is called with something that indicates no window (NULL window arg, or null aWindow->window, whatever)
  • http://devedge-temp.mozilla.org/library/manuals/2002/plugin/1.0/npp_api12.html#999390

Other questions

• Who owns the widget? The instance owner, or the frame?
  • Note that some functions (some listeners) require a widget.