Future Releases » Feedback

Help us test New Tab!

ttaubert — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 18:01:56 +0000

Over the last few weeks we worked hard on getting the New Tab feature into Nightly builds. This feature displays a series of thumbnails of your most commonly visited sites (based on your Awesome bar) to make it easier for you to quickly move on to your next task.

We turned the New Tab feature on by default to make it easier for you to test on Aurora. We plan to turn the feature off again on February 16th (next Thursday). You can easily toggle the preference if you want to continue testing it on Aurora past the 16th. Just go to about:preferences and set ‘browser.newtab.url’ preference to ‘about:newtab’, ‘browser.newtabpage.enabled’ to ‘true’ and restart Firefox Aurora.

You can easily file bugs using the following link: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Firefox&component=General or read more about the open bugs here bug 455553.

You can also leave your feedback here if that’s easier (#newtab). We’re looking forward to your feedback!

Help Test Default Compatibility for Add-ons on Aurora

Mozilla — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 21:41:35 +0000

Editor’s note: Amy Tsay recently posted about Default Compatibility for Add-ons. The full post is included below:

The latest phase of our add-on compatibility plan has arrived in Aurora, and we need your help to test it! Since Firefox 4, we have been automatically making add-ons hosted on AMO compatible with new Firefox releases. Now, we have extended automatic compatibility to non-hosted add-ons, which account for 75% of all add-ons in use (currently in the hundreds of millions). This means you should see less of the incompatible add-ons dialog, and more of your add-ons should just work.

You can read more about the plan, including how we determine eligibility for automatic compatibility here. For additional background reading, check out this blog post.

Once you have Aurora installed, all add-ons that are compatible with Firefox 4 or later can be installed without extra steps. Firefox will install them even if they are declared incompatible in the manifest file.

If you don’t already have Aurora installed, you can get it here. With Aurora, you’ll see our newest features before they go beta, and have a chance to send us feedback before the final release.

Test the New Mozilla Firefox Beta: Making Browsing More Convenient

Mozilla — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 00:38:44 +0000

The latest Mozilla Firefox Beta is now available for testing on Windows, Mac, Linux and Android. This beta adds features and user interface elements that make browsing easier and tools that help developers build more secure and innovative Web experiences.

New in Firefox Beta for Windows, Mac and Linux:

Twitter Search: Firefox Beta adds Twitter as a default search option to make searching #hashtags and @usernames easier. (Currently available in English, Portuguese and Slovenian. More languages will be added in future releases.)

Restore tabs on demand: Users can choose to load tabs only when selected, resulting in faster start-up times when windows with lots of tabs are restored. Windows users can find this option in the Firefox Menu, under Options, on the General tab. Mac users can find this option in the Firefox Menu, under Preferences, in the General tab.
Enhanced control of add-ons: Users will receive a one-time notification to review and confirm third party add-ons they want to keep, disable or delete. When Firefox starts and finds that a third-party program has installed an add-on, Firefox will disable the add-on until the user has explicitly opted in, giving users better control over their Web experience.
Tab animations: Firefox makes it easier to re-order and tear off tabs with animated tab movement.
CORS for WebGL textures: Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) enables Web developers to load textures from other domains for WebGL in a secure way.
WebSockets updates: Firefox now prevents the use of plaintext WebSockets when created from an SSL page, which improves security for users.
HTML5 Native Right Click Menu: Web developers can now add items directly to the Firefox right click menu using simple HTML5 markup.
HTML5 media elements: Developers can add a lot of video and audio elements to a website without impacting performance
Read more about Firefox features for Web developers here.

New in Firefox Beta for Android:

Master Password Support: This feature uses one master password to help users encrypt saved usernames and passwords for increased security.
Home Screen Bookmarks: Users can add any bookmarked website to their Android Home Screen and launch it with one click.

We appreciate your help with improving future versions of Firefox by submitting feedback.

For more information:

Download Firefox Beta for Mac, Windows, Linux / Firefox Beta for Android
Technical release notes for Firefox Beta for Windows Mac, Linux / Firefox Beta for Android

New Firefox Aurora for Windows, Mac, Linux and Android is Available for Testing

Mozilla — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 21:39:31 +0000

The latest experimental additions to Firefox Aurora for Windows, Mac and Linux streamline the user interface and give users more control when managing third-party add-ons. This update adds support for more HTML5 technologies, improves performance and scalability of HTML5 media elements, updates the WebSockets protocol and adds CORS support to WebGL. This update to Firefox Aurora for Android adds features to make mobile browsing more secure and convenient.

New Experimental Features in Firefox Aurora for Windows, Mac, Linux:

Users have more control in managing their add-ons (#thirdpartyaddons): After upgrading, users will receive a one-time notification with the option to review and confirm the add-ons they want to keep, disable or delete.

Additionally, Firefox will now ask user permission before installing third-party add-ons. Any third-party add-ons will be disabled by default until the user confirms the installation.

Experimental Interface Updates:

Tab animations (#tabanimations): Tabs animate to make it easier for users to see when they are moving, reordering or detaching them.

Restore tabs on-demand (#RestoreTabsOnDemand): For users that have lots of tabs open, we’ve added a preference that allows tabs to load on demand, resulting in faster start-up times when windows are restored.

To turn on this preference on Windows, go to your Firefox Menu button, select Option, then go to the General tab and check the ‘Don’t load tabs until selected’ box.

For Mac, Go to Preferences under the Aurora Menu, then go to the General tab and check the ‘Don’t load tabs until selected’ box.

Channel Specific ‘Firefox Menus’: Each development channel now has its own Firefox Menu color to easily distinguish among Nightly, Aurora and Beta releases (Windows only).

Experimental Platform Features:

Improvements to HTML5 media elements: We’ve changed how we create threads for HTML5 media elements so that a large number of media elements can be created without overwhelming the browser. There’s added support for new media APIs to improve the overall performance of video and audio in the browser.

Additional support for HTML5 technologies: We’ve done a lot of work in this release to add support for technologies that are in the HTML5 standard. For example, the crossorigin attribute and insertAdjacentHTML are now supported.

WebSockets Updates: This update includes a lot of improvements to WebSockets. We updated to the latest version of the protocol and added support for new WebSockets APIs.

HTML5 Native Right Click Menu Support: We’ve included support for an experimental HTML5 feature that lets the user add menu items to the right click menu on websites. You can learn more in the bug.

Support for CORS for WebGL textures: Textures loaded from other domains now require the use of CORS.

You can see the partial list of platform features in this Mozilla Hacks blog or Firefox for Developers article.

New Experimental Features in Firefox Aurora for Android:

Master Password Support (#mobilemasterpassword): The Master Password Support feature helps users encrypt saved usernames and passwords for better security. Users only need one master password

To activate Master Password Support on Android, go to “Preferences” and select the “Use Master Password” check box.

Add Bookmarks to Your Home Screen: Users can now bookmark any website and add it to their Android Home Screen. From the Home Screen, the user can launch the bookmarked website with one click.

Try the features now and start testing!

Tell us what you think. Your feedback on these new experimental features helps us determine what makes it to beta and final release.To get started:

Give us your feedback by visiting our Input Page or simply clicking the Feedback button on the top right corner of your desktop browser. For Android, go to the Give Feedback button from your About:Home page.
Or, use the hashtags (#feature) provided above to give us feature-specific feedback.

If you already have Firefox Aurora installed, you will receive an automated update notification in the next few days.

To check if you are running the latest Firefox Aurora on your desktop, go to the “About Aurora” menu to apply the update manually.