It would be great to integrate containers with Plasma5’s activities. Firefox should talk to DBus deamon to get active activity, read information about connection activities to windows and open new tab in window belonged to current activity. That’s scenario about opening new tab. Of course, new window should been created if there;s no window connected to current activity.
I’m not sure I follow, what would be the advantages of us integrating with Plasma5 like this? (I don’t use KDE so don’t really have the oversight).
Activities in KDE4/Plasma5 is a kind of containers technology (Like in Firefox), so integrating both technologies is clear. User could have activities like: entertainment, work, development, etc. Plasma5 remember last open documents and last open programs per activity. Additionally user could connect file to activity.
Imagine user open Firefox (instance/window) on work activity, so Firefox should open new window with work container. Also user could click on link in instant messaging on development activity, so this page should been remembered in development container.
This sounds a lot like how Qubes works, I don’t think Firefox could ever integrate like this with a containment technology like this. Qubes runs multiple Firefox installs in different VMs.
Plasma5/Qubes are welcome to use containers via an extension on the outside or profiles to add features to their setups certainly. I could see an implementation where Qubes could offer to open a new link in a different container which actually is at the OS level.
Also the OS could choose to implement different profiles for each activity.
Some of the issues I see with Firefox trying to change it’s implementation per OS:
- OS level isolation isn’t supposed to be crossed. Qubes would prevent this.
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Containers works per tab, how does opening a new tab in work help if I can create personal in a work window?
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Maintaining the relationship of activities/containers might be a pain and also not make sense for some users
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Process isolation isn’t part of containers yet
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Firefox rarely changes implementation per OS setup
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Profiles sound more closer to OS level isolation
This sounds a lot like something that should be written as a web extension first by someone who works on Plasma5/Qubes. Extensions can message native processes and it would allow prototyping with the correct users if it was useful.
That’s not like Qubes, On Plasma5 session, there’s DBus daemon, which remember current activity id/name. Firefox would ask about current activity and that’s all.
If I found a some spare of time, I would implement this like an extension.
Thanks.