[MOB-4150][MOB-4151] Hide NTP referral row, news section; fix shortcuts width and row cap

[falkorichter]

Summary

Closes MOB-4150 — Remove referrals
Closes MOB-4151 — Remove news
Closes MOB-3999 - Update shortcuts to leverage Firefox implementation

Deactivates the NTP referral row and Ecosia news section by hiding them behind debug toggles (off by default). Also fixes layout inconsistencies: section widths are now consistent across all Ecosia NTP sections, and the shortcuts row is capped at 5 tiles to avoid a cramped layout.

What changed

• Referral row hidden by default — NTPImpactCellViewModel.infoItemSections gates the second row (referral) behind ToggleNTPReferralRow.isEnabled (UserDefaults "NTPShowReferralRow", default false)
• News section hidden by default — EcosiaHomepageAdapter.shouldShowNews() gates behind ToggleNTPNewsSection.isEnabled (UserDefaults "NTPShowNewsSection", default false); .ecosiaNews also removed from CustomizableNTPSettingConfig.allCases so the user-facing NTP customization toggle disappears
• Debug toggles — two new entries in the Ecosia Debug settings section (tap version number 5× to reveal): Debug: Toggle - Show NTP Referral Row and Debug: Toggle - Show NTP News Section
• Settings root fix — AppSettingsTableViewController.generateSettings() was only building Firefox sections; now calls getEcosiaSettingsSectionsShowingDebug() so Ecosia debug sections are actually shown
• Bookmarks — no Ecosia gate applied; controlled by the existing Firefox user setting (Homepage → Bookmarks toggle)
• Consistent section widths — news and shortcuts (top sites) now use getEcosiaSectionInsets (same as impact/referral/library/header), so all sections share the same horizontal margins on iPad and iPhone landscape
• Shortcuts row cap — TopSitesSectionLayoutProvider.UX.maxCards = 5 caps the computed tile count; previously the algorithm filled available width greedily and could produce 7+ icons per row on a wide iPad

Architecture

See docs/ntp-remove-referrals/README.md for full architecture, file-by-file breakdown, and testing plan.

Files changed

File	Change	Firefox file?
Client/Frontend/Settings/Main/AppSettingsTableViewController.swift	Wire generateSettings() to Ecosia sections	⚠️ Yes
Client/Frontend/Home/Homepage/HomepageDimensionImplementation.swift	Apply maxCards cap	⚠️ Yes
Client/Frontend/Home/Homepage/Layout/TopSitesSectionLayoutProvider.swift	Add maxCards = 5 constant	⚠️ Yes
Client/Ecosia/UI/NTP/Impact/NTPImpactCellViewModel.swift	Gate referral row	Ecosia
Client/Ecosia/Frontend/Home/EcosiaHomepageAdapter.swift	Gate news section	Ecosia
Client/Ecosia/UI/NTP/Customization/CustomizableNTPSettingConfig.swift	Remove .ecosiaNews from allCases	Ecosia
Client/Ecosia/Settings/EcosiaDebugSettings.swift	Add ToggleNTPReferralRow, ToggleNTPNewsSection	Ecosia
Client/Ecosia/Extensions/AppSettingsTableViewController+Ecosia.swift	Register new debug settings	Ecosia
Client/Ecosia/Extensions/HomepageSectionLayoutProvider+Ecosia.swift	Unify widths for news and shortcuts sections	Ecosia

Deferred

• Dynamic wallpaper text colours — Wallpaper already decodes text-color and logo-text-color from the JSON into UIColor? properties. Wiring these into NTPImpactRowView, NTPLogoCell, and the news section header (replacing the current hardcoded .white) was prototyped and reverted pending design sign-off on contrast/accessibility across all wallpapers. Follow-up ticket needed.

Test plan

• Launch app → NTP → referral row not visible in Impact section (only trees + investment)
• Launch app → NTP → news section not shown
• NTP customization row → news toggle not present
• Settings → tap version 5× → Debug section appears (not DEBUG)
• Debug: Toggle - Show NTP Referral Row → tap → referral row appears on NTP
• Debug: Toggle - Show NTP News Section → tap → news section appears on NTP
• Toggle both back OFF → sections disappear; state persists across app restart
• iPad: all NTP sections (impact, news, shortcuts, library) have the same horizontal margins
• Shortcuts row shows at most 5 tiles on any device width

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 10 out of 13 changed files in this pull request and generated 1 comment.

Comments suppressed due to low confidence (3)

docs/ntp-remove-referrals/README.md:3

• The document title says "Remove Referrals, News and Bookmarks Sections (MOB-4150)", but the changes describe hiding referrals (MOB-4150) and news (MOB-4151), plus library shortcuts (not the Firefox bookmarks section). Consider updating the title to reflect the correct tickets and the actual sections being gated so the doc remains a reliable reference.

# NTP: Remove Referrals, News and Bookmarks Sections (MOB-4150)

## Overview

firefox-ios/Client/Ecosia/Frontend/Home/EcosiaHomepageAdapter.swift:199

• ToggleNTPNewsSection currently only gates whether the .ecosiaNews section is appended, but newsViewModel still subscribes in NTPNewsCellViewModel.init and refreshData(...) is still called unconditionally. This means news can still be fetched/updated even when the section is hidden by default. Consider lazy/conditional initialization of newsViewModel and gating refresh/loading paths behind the same toggle to avoid background work and network usage when the feature is disabled.

    private func shouldShowNews() -> Bool {
        // Ecosia: Hidden by default (MOB-4150); re-enable via debug menu
        guard ToggleNTPNewsSection.isEnabled else { return false }
        return User.shared.showEcosiaNews
    }

firefox-ios/Client/Ecosia/UI/NTP/Customization/CustomizableNTPSettingConfig.swift:16

• The comment references MOB-4150 for hiding the news setting, but the PR description ties news removal to MOB-4151. Updating the ticket reference here would avoid confusion when tracking why the case is excluded from allCases.

    // Ecosia: ecosiaNews hidden by default (MOB-4150); removed from the customization UI
    case ecosiaNews

    // Ecosia: manually provide allCases so ecosiaNews is excluded from the NTP customization row while
    // the case itself remains for analytics and User.shared.showEcosiaNews persistence
    static var allCases: [CustomizableNTPSettingConfig] { [.topSites, .climateImpact] }

[Copilot]

This change caps numberOfTopSitesPerRow to 5, but there are existing unit tests (e.g. HomepageDimensionCalculatorTests) that currently assert higher values for iPad / landscape iPhone (7/8/10). Those tests will fail unless updated to reflect the new max-cards behavior (or made conditional if the cap is Ecosia-only).