Schedule & Progress onUpcoming Releases
Firefox Desktop
Current Releases
- Firefox 24 is live (10% throttled)
- 17.0.9 and 24 esr Live as well
Beta (25)
- Firefox 25 Beta1 in progress and is with QA, scheduled to be shipped tomorrow
- Background thumbnailing got held back due to e10s crash issues. Will ride a later train (maybe 27!)
Aurora (26)
- Aurora (26) is throttled, no updates until end of week
- Enabled H.264 support for Linux (bug 886181)
- Added MP3 support for OSX (bug 914479)
- New downloads back-end landed in time for the uplift (bug 825588)
Nightly (27)
- No longer decode images that aren’t visible in a page when the page is first loaded – reduces jank and OOM issues. More details in the Engineering meeting notes (bug 847223
- CSS position:sticky landed but not yet enabled on nightly (bug 886646)
- 80,000+ views on Corey Ford’s Air Mozilla intern presentation!
Firefox Metro
- Team working on Iteration #15 until Tuesday September 24.
- Metro Preview is releasing on Aurora 26.
- QA is regression testing Iterations #1 – #14.
Firefox Mobile
Beta (25)
- Contacts API (bug 857730) is moved out of this release to ‘on deck’ – enabled in Nightly for testing and Packaged/Priv’d Apps will be the first functionality to expose this API to users (no firm release as of now)
- Top issues to tackle in beta include: bug 902431, bug 900020
- We’ve moved South African English (za-EN) to Fx26 but we’ve added Romanian (ro-RO)
Aurora (26)
- We are taking a step back on the current design and implementation of about:home, it’s still all about improved access but we are preserving Top Sites with thumbnails vs. having the thumbnails relegated to the Bookmarks section bug 917394
Nightly (27)
- Lots of the front-end team focused on the rejiggering of about:home
- Plenty of goodness happening at the work week which could land for Fx27
Feedback Summary
Desktop
No current fires. Firefox 24 snippet survey live this week. Results hopefully early next week.
Mobile
No updates, we are watching for 24 feedback as it starts to roll in
UX & User Research
No update this week.
Market Insights from the Market Strategy Team
Desktop / Platform
- HDMI Forum released the HDMI 2.0 specification with increase in bandwidth to 18Gbps with the ability to transmit 4K or Ultra HD video of 3840×2160 pixels resolution (2160p) at up to 60 frames per second, 4 times of 1080p/ 60fps video resolution. HDMI 2.0 supports 32 audio channels, dynamic auto lip-sync and extensions to Consumer Electronics Control. It supports up to 1536kHz audio sample frequency, simultaneous delivery of dual video streams to multiple users on the same screen, simultaneous delivery of multi-stream audio to multiple users, and 21:9 video aspect ratio. [1]
- Brazil wants Google, Facebook and others to store data locally and intends to influence using options such as tax incentives and purchase policies. [2]
- Google is working on AdID, an alternative ad tracking system that could replace cookies and it would offer certain privacy and security enhancements over the cookie, including enabling users to limit ad tracking through browser settings. [3]
Microsoft
- Microsoft Corp released an emergency software fix [4] for IE 6.0 through IE 11 on Tuesday after hackers exploited a security flaw which allows remote code execution and attacked an unknown number of users.[5]
- Microsoft updated Bing with new golden orange logo, [6] and combines the Snapshot and Sidebar features for search results, bringing information from Bing’s knowledge graph and from the user’s social connections across social networks like Facebook and Twitter [7].
AMD
- AMD revealed its embedded processor roadmap [8] for run verticals such as slot machines, factory robots, airport signs, medical equipment, among others, all optimized for graphics, low-power devices and high-performance computing.
Apple
- Apple issued an update for the OS X Mountain Lion with version 10.8.5.[9] which fixes an issue with display of Mail, improves AFP file transfer performance over 802.11ac Wi-Fi, resolves issues with smart cards and screen savers, improves Xsan reliability, improves reliability of large file transfers over Ethernet, improves performance when authenticating via Open Directory server. [10]
Mobile
- Google Wallet was updated to be less dependent on NFC and added features that non-NFC equipped phones can use, such as sending money to an email address and storing loyalty cards. This move makes the app available across all Android devices and opens up the door for cross – platform compatibility. This is likely to be a concern for operators, who have been opposing Google Wallet in favour of their own, yet – to – be – released, ISIS solution. Google recently acquired Bump, a company that produces a proprietary technology that serves a similar function as NFC, but also sends data to the cloud in the process.
- Facebook is rumored to be testing its own payments services. Users would be allowed to link their credit card information to their Facebook login, which would allow them to make purchases on websites that use Facebook’s identity management system. The company says it has no intention to start handling the actual processing of the payments. Imp
- Jolla’s Sailfish mobile OS is now compatible with Android apps and is said to be able to run on common hardware produced for Android, particularly phones and tablets. Jolla is preparing to launch a second pre – sales campaign ahead of its first release in Q4. The first one is said to have sold in the tens of thousands of devices, but up to 50,000 units. This is important because it makes it easier for Chinese OEMs to use Sailfish on devices as they can use hardware configurations that they have ordered / are producing for Android phones.
- Intel has launched a new tablet chipset, called Bay Trail / Atom Z3000 Series. The new product is declared to deliver up to 2x the CPU performance and twice the GPU performance of previous Atom chips and provide 10 hours of battery life and 3 weeks of standby without the need for a fan. The chipset is meant to run both Windows 8 and Android. Important because it’s a new step in Intel’s progress to become a significant chipset provider for the mobile market. Going after the tablet segment is a more natural, thus potentially more successful, technological step for the company that is dominating the desktop space.
- 69% of US mobile phone users access the Web through their device and 42% do so daily, according to research by Pew Research, which is double the amount that did so in 2009. This makes mobile browsing the most common way daily mobile service users use their phone, followed by social networks (32%) and watching video (20%). Most likely to browse on mobile are young adults aged 18-29 (85%), African Americans (74%), those financially well off (79%) and urban residents (66%). Important because it shows mobile browsing as an important use case in the market with the most app availability. Net Applications puts browsing on mobile devices at 13% of the overall browsing worldwide.
Marketing, Press & Public Reaction
- Working to use the What’s New page for Aurora Metro uplift this Friday
- Australis: Although the projected launch date has shifted to January 2014 we’re still gunning ahead to finalize a launch strategy for both the pre-release and GA timeframes [Laura]
- Search Engine Optimization: Improvements are now rolling out, with the first larger batch due to go live 9/26. Implementing a critical mass of these recommendations should increase the amount of organic search traffic to our site (and thus, downloads) [Laura, Cmore, Jen B]
- Consumer Value Proposition Discovery: Now that in-field research is complete, insights will be applied to a quantitative survey that’s now in-design [Laura]
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