Customize about:tor

Parent issue: Switch to customized about:tor as the homepage ... (#21222) • intrigeri • Tails_7.1

Timeline

• ideally ship in 7.1, worst case in 7.2
• engineering exploration on Sept 16-18
• actual customization will be blocked by #21223 at some point, but early design & writing work can happen earlier, and early implementation drafts can be tested in Tor Browser outside of Tails; ideally this would be done early enough that we can upstream it in time for the Tor Browser that we'll ship in 7.1, or at least have an idea of whether the Applications team will want this in their codebase, but it's acceptable if for 1 release we carry this as a Tails-specific patches

Scope

Any minimal customization of about:tor that we want ASAP as part of the MVP that we'll ship in 7.1 or 7.2.

Out of scope

• fetching online news and displaying them on about:tor (#21227)
• more generally anything that's not needed in the MVP

To Do

• Engineering exploration [@intrigeri]
  • Figure out how to quickly test customization without having to rebuild Tor Browser or Tails
    • page contents (HTML, JS, CSS, images)
      • chrome/browser/content/browser/abouttor/ in Browser/browser/omni.ja
      • in Git: browser/components/abouttor/content/
    • user-visible strings
      • rapid dev: extract localization/en-US/toolkit/global/tor-browser.ftl from Browser/omni.ja, modify, re-inject into the archive
      • in Git: toolkit/locales/en-US/toolkit/global/tor-browser.ftl
    • Consider providing a script for sajolida → not needed since a few relatively simple command lines are sufficient
    • Document how sajolida can customize the contents → !2466
  • Figure out how to detect Tails
  • Check how much we need to do that upstream vs. what we can do at Tails build time
    • This will inform the timeline of some of the next steps.
    • Conclusion: technically, all the changes we have in mind can be applied at Tails build time, so it's acceptable if, for 1 Tails release, we carry this as a Tails-specific patches in tails/tails. But that's not sustainable for much longer.
  • Check how l10n will work
    • From https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/wiki/-/blob/master/Development-Information/Tor-Browser/Localization.md?ref_type=heads and https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/translation/-/blob/tor-browser/en-US/tor-browser.ftl?ref_type=heads I understand it'll all be automatic, as long as we put our strings in that file.
  • Learn how the time-gating feature works
    • It's not a blocker initially but it would be good to have an idea of how much effort it would take to use it later, next time we need it.
    • Example: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/merge_requests/1689/diffs
• Check with the Applications team that the chosen approach works for them [intrigeri]
  • https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/44201
  • https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/merge_requests/1690
• Customize the contents [@sajolida]
  • Add "sign up for Tails news", in addition to "sign up for Tor news"
  • "Your connection to Tor is not being managed by... (#21215) • sajolida • Tails_7.1
  • Link to release notes, like Signal's "what's new in this update"
  • Adjust contents specific to running a testing version (replaces https://tails.net/home/testing/)
  • Make space for more dynamic contents (possibly time-gated once we need it)

Potential future improvements

• Figure out which of those we want to track on new issues
  • Only display the time-gated news once we can rely on the system clock