Schedule & Progress onUpcoming Releases
Firefox Desktop
Current Releases
- 20.0.1 windows only dot release has gone to build and is on track for release tomorrow
- Bugs Addressed – bug 846848,bug 857588,bug 857672,bug 857291
Beta (21)
- FF21.0b2 for Desktop was released yesterday
- Support for Social multi provider – (Mixi, Cliqz, MSN Now)
- FF21.0b2 for mobile is with QA and will be released before end of week
Aurora (22)
- FF22.0a2 – Updates were unthrottled last Friday, looks good
Feedback Summary
Desktop
Firefox 20 General 4.1/5 stars
TLDR: Most users are quite happy with FF 20. There are intermittent reports of slowness, perf, and addon issues.
Positive:
- No other browser this week has allowed me to log in to my college campus so I could work online to complete my assignments other than Firefox.Firefox is the ONLY BROWSER That Works for me!! 🙂 Thank you..
- It’s simplicity – no distractions or flashy messages on the front page, and it’s so easy and fast to use
- I like it better than google. It seems faster and lists places to go on the bottom that I don’t have to type them in. Keep up the good work.
- i don’t know much about computers but i have been using Firefox for at least six years and find it to be the best for me, its fast and easy to use and for me its just right/ thank you Firefox
Negative:
- takes lot of RAM. I expect FF to load pretty fast with a very low mem requirements.
- I like every thing about Firefox except crashes a lot. I like the new features, I can tell it is getting faster and the crashes seem to happen less.
Private browsing: 4.0/5 stars
TLDR: Used regularly 58% of the time, rarely/never 42% of the time. Still a lot of confusion over what it does but almost everyone says positive things.
Positives:
- I used Chrome for private navigation and Firefox for day to day stuff.
- Finally i will be able to dump Chrome for good! Hoorray!
- I like that that now the private browsing function opens up another window leaving the original in tact. In general it looks and feels great, not sure really how helpful i can be.
- LOVE THIS FEATURE
Some (minor) pushback:
- You have changed things at the bottom of tools, and over in File you put in a New Private Window. I liked tools just the way it was and did not know that you were going to make this drastic change. I have been trying to back to version 18 or 19 to get tools back the way it was. I would be happy if you could put me back to tools the way it was. Enough said……….
- I am still on the fence about the changes to “Private browsing”. I think I might have preferred the all or none approach before. I don’t understand the reason for the change, but can live with it.
Download Manager: 3.8/5 stars
TLDR: Mostly positive. The negatives are from users that either didn’t see a reason to change the feature or just have suggestions for improving the Download Manager.
Postive:
- I like it, because it makes it easier than having a separate window just for downloads.
- Its much easier to use…thank you
- its about time you guys changed it. the new one is absolutely brilliant!
- Keep on doing what you’re doing. If I can understand it, anybody can. Thx Firefox 😉
Negative:
- I didn’t see anything wrong with the way it was.
- Did it NEED to be changed?
- May just have to get used to it. Old ways sometimes die hard 🙂
Feature Suggestions:
- There needs to be a button to quickly clear the recently downloaded files, not just through the “Show all downloads” window.
- I’d like it more if you added a pause/resume button to the left of the open containing folder button
- It only shows bar & remaining, I will very much love it if it will show the download speed in first click.
Market Insights from the Product Marketing Strategy Team
Desktop / Platform
- Google forked WebKit creating a new engine called Blink. While Google is able to remove “7 build systems, more than 7,000 files and 4.5 million lines”, the WebKit community is also cleaning house.
- Over the last year, Google contributors made around half of commits to WebKit, so the WebKit community is now in the process of reprioritizing and identifying code areas that are now unmaintained. Significant portions of the WebKit codebase that require new owners include the Web Inspector, File System API and CSS Variables.
- Google posted a video where lead developers answer community questions about Blink. Google says they “have no plans” to change the format of the user agent string.
- Opera has confirmed that it will use Blink. Yandex’s browser will as well.
- Google’s Alex Russell blogged about how it will allow the Chrome web platform development team to iterate faster. Justin Schuh described the security features that will likely be coming.
- Chrome 27 Beta was released. Web content appears 5% faster, the Chromium team now uses benchmarks from webpagetest.org in their testing, a “simple, elegant user interface” for month, week, and date <input> types, live, low-latency audio support for the Web Audio API, the Sync FileSystem API for Chrome Apps, and other improvements.
- Chrome now has a regularly-updated, detailed, feature dashboard for web platform work.
- Chrome for Android now syncs passwords and autofill entries for logged-in users.
- In likely effort to better support emerging markets with poorer bandwidth, select videos on YouTube are now available at a 144p pixel video resolution
Microsoft
- Microsoft released [www.computerworld.com/s/article/9238278/Microsoft_takes_new_Scroogled_shot_at_Google another attack] in its “Scroogled” campaign, describing how the Google Play store passes users’ personal information to app developers.
Mobile
- Facebook Home was released.
- An app that extends into a whole phone experience, similar to a launcher, but with deep social integration, the product will be pre – installed on the HTC First.
- It is available to install on a limited number of high – end devices (HTC One X, Samsung Galaxy S III, Samsung Galaxy Note II).
- Analysts estimate that Facebook Home is available to 10 – 15% of the current Android install base and with added support for Android 4 and later it can have an addressable base of over 50% of Android. Facebook’s current mobile user base was 29% on iOS and 38% on Android in December 2012, so analysts estimate that Home will be available to 20 – 25% of the current Facebook mobile user base and assuming Android v4 support it could reach 45 – 50%.
- Microsoft, Nokia, and a number of top developers have filed a formal complaint to the European Union against Google’s use of its apps in Android. The accusation is of using Android ” as a deceptive way to build advantages for key Google apps in 70 percent of the smartphones shipped today”. This comes at a time when the European Union is in the final stages of an inquiry into the search offering of the company.
- New version distribution numbers for Android put Gingerbread at 39.8%, Ice Cream Sandwich at 29.3% and Jelly Bean at 25%. The next version of Android, Key Lime Pie, is expected to be unveiled at Google I/O in May.
- Today, an average US consumer spends 2 hours and 38 min a day on a phone or tablet, according to Flurry Analytics. 80% of the time is spent on apps and 20% (31 minutes) is spent on the Web. Games are the largest category in terms of time spent (32%), followed by Facebook with 18%. On iOS, the browser, Safari, comes on the third place, with 12%.
- The Google Play Store was re – designed to optimize for discovery of entertainment content.
Planning Meeting Details
- Wednesdays – 11:00am PT, 18:00 UTC
- Mountain View Offices: Warp Core Conference Room
- Toronto Offices: Finch Conference Room
- irc.mozilla.org #planning for backchannel
- (the developer meeting takes place on Tuesdays)
Video/Teleconference Details – NEW
- 650-903-0800 or 650-215-1282 x92 Conf# 99696 (US/INTL)
- 1-800-707-2533 (pin 369) Conf# 99696 (US)
- Vidyo Room: ProductCoordination
- Vidyo Guest URL