Proposal: A persistOnNavigation property for the action API

[newRoland]

Context

From an active Chromium issue, reported by @ericlaw1979 (Microsoft).

When an extension calls action.setTitle, setIcon, setBadgeText, setBadgeTextColor and setBadgeBackgroundColor for a specific tab, these values are automatically reset back to their default values on every navigation.

This behavior is undesirable in most cases; fixing it requires constantly calling these APIs again, and doing so results in a flicker as the icon changes from the default back to the desired icon.

This necessitates using webNavigation.onCommitted or tabs.onUpdated to re-apply the desired action icon, badge color, badge text, etc. These are high frequency events which means the background script is chronically on or loads frequently.

Proposal

Initial proposal by @wOxxOm from the same Chromium issue.

Add a parameter like persistOnNavigation. If enabled, the icon, badge text/color won't reset on navigation. This maintains background compatibility, but makes it optional.

browser.action.setBadgeBackgroundColor({
    color: "#ff0000",
    tabId,
    persistOnNavigation: true
})