Please note some of the information provided in this report may be subject to change as we are sometimes sharing information about projects that are still in early stages and are not final yet.
New content and projects
What’s new or coming up in Firefox desktop
While the amount of content has been relatively small over the last few months in Firefox, there have been some UI changes and updates to privacy setting related text such as form autofill, Cookie Banner Blocker, passwords (about:logins), and cookie and site data*. One change happening here (and across all Mozilla products) is the move away from using the term “login” to describe the credentials for accessing websites and instead use “password(s).”
In addition, while the number of strings is low, Firefox’s PDF viewer will soon have the ability to highlight content. You can test this feature now in Nightly.
Most of these strings and translations can be previewed by checking a Nightly build. If you’re new to localizing Firefox or if you missed our deep dive, please check out our blog post from July to learn more about the Firefox release schedule.
*Recently in our L10N community matrix channel, someone from our community asked how the new strings for clearing browsing history and data (see screenshot below) from Cookie and Site Data could be shown in Nightly.
In order to show the strings in Nightly, the privacy.sanitize.useOldClearHistoryDialog preference needs to be set to false. To set the preference, type about:config in your URL bar and press enter. A warning may pop up warning you to proceed with caution, click the button to continue. On the page that follows, paste privacy.sanitize.useOldClearHistoryDialog into the search field, then click the toggle button to change the value to false.
You can then trigger the new dialog by clicking “Clear Data…” from the Cookies and Site Data setting or “Clear History…” from the History. (You may need to quit Firefox and open it again for the change to take effect.).
In case of doubts about managing about:config, you can consult the Configuration Editor guide on SUMO.
What’s new or coming up in mobile
Much like desktop, mobile land has been pretty calm recently.
Having said that, we would like to call out the new Translation feature that is now available to test on the latest Firefox for Android v124 Nightly builds (this is possible only through the secret settings at the moment). It’s a built-in full page translation feature that allows you to seamlessly browse the web in your preferred language. As you navigate the site, Firefox continuously translates new content.
Check your Pontoon notifications for instructions on how to test it out. Note that the feature is not available on iOS at the moment.
In the past couple of months you may have also noticed strings mentioning a new shopping feature called “Review Checker” (that we mentioned for desktop in our November edition). The feature is still a bit tricky to test on Android, but there are instructions you can follow – these can also be found in your Pontoon notification archive.
For testing on iOS, you just need to have the latest Beta version installed and navigate to the product pages on the US sites of amazon.com, bestbuy.com, and walmart.com. A logo in the URL bar will appear with a notification, to launch and test the feature.
Finally, another notable change that has been called out under the Firefox desktop section above: we are moving away from using the term “login” to describe the credentials for accessing websites and instead use “password(s).”
What’s new or coming up in Foundation projects
New languages have been added to Common Voice in 2023: Tibetan, Chichewa, Ossetian, Emakhuwa, Laz, Pular Guinée, Sindhi. Welcome!
What’s new or coming up in Pontoon
Improved support for mobile devices
Pontoon translation workspace is now responsive, which means you can finally use Pontoon on your mobile device to translate and review strings! We developed a single-column layout for mobile phones and 2-column layout for tablets.
Screenshot of Pontoon UI on a smartphone running Firefox for Android
2024 Pontoon survey
Thanks again to everyone who has participated in the 2024 Pontoon survey. The 3 top-voted features we commit to implement are:
- Add ability to edit Translation Memory entries (611 votes).
- Improve performance of Pontoon translation workspace and dashboards (603 votes).
- Add ability to propose new Terminology entries (595 votes).
Friends of the Lion 
We started a series called “Localizer Spotlight” and have published two already. Do you know someone who should be featured there? Let us know here!
Also, do someone in your l10n community who’s been doing a great job and should appear in this section? Contact us and we’ll make sure they get a shout-out!
Useful Links
- #l10n-community channel on Element (chat.mozilla.org)
- Localization category on Discourse
- L10n blog
Questions? Want to get involved?
If you want to get involved, or have any question about l10n, reach out to:
- Francesco Lodolo (flod) – Engineering Manager
- Bryan – l10n Project Manager
- Delphine – l10n Project Manager for mobile
- Peiying (CocoMo) – l10n Project Manager for mozilla.org, marketing, and legal
- Francis – l10n Project Manager for Common Voice, Mozilla Foundation
- Théo Chevalier – l10n Project Manager for Mozilla Foundation
- Matjaž (mathjazz) – Pontoon dev
- Eemeli – Pontoon, Fluent dev
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