Firefox/Planning/2011-09-07
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Planning Meeting Details
- Wednesdays – 11:00am PDT, 18:00 UTC
- Mountain View Offices: Warp Core Conference Room
- Toronto Offices: Fin du Monde 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# 95312 (US/INTL)
- 1-800-707-2533 (pin 369) Conf# 95312 (US)
- Vidyo Room: Warp Core
- Vidyo Guest URL
REMEMBER
These notes are read by people who weren’t able to attend the meeting. Please make sure to include links and context so they can be understood.
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Actions from Last Week
- Dave Mason to come back with information about jetpack adoption metrics as viewed through AMO
- In August 22% of new add-ons were built with add-on sdk(jetpack)
- the trend is rising
-
- We are going to be adding new stats to pull from AMO soon including:
- number/percentage of new authors submitting new SDK-based addons
- number/percentage of existing authors (of either traditional or SDK-based addons) submitting new SDK-based addons
- number/percentage of SDK-based addons
- number/percentage of SDK-based updates to SDK-based addons (with and without repacks)
- number/percentage of SDK-based updates to traditional addons
- We are going to be adding new stats to pull from AMO soon including:
- Michelle to scour mobile “flash fail” feedback to see if it’s clustered around a small number of sites
Schedule & Progress on Upcoming Releases
- Next source migration date: 2011-09-27 (20 days)
Firefox Desktop
Release (3.6, 6)
- Watching to see if we need to do any more rapid response updates for the DigiNotar CA stuff
- Firefox 3.6.23 is the update that will ship with Firefox 7
- It was originally called .21 and then .22 but those were used up by rapid response updates
- Aside: This is why we started to use code names for previous releases (“Macaw”), but note in the new process they are not needed (Firefox 7 stayed Firefox 7 even though we slipped 2 rapid response releases in there)
- It was originally called .21 and then .22 but those were used up by rapid response updates
Beta (7)
- Release date: 2011-09-27 (20 days)
- Building 7.0b5 today, plan to get it out the beta audience before the weekend
Aurora (8)
Nightly (9)
Firefox Mobile
6
- Updates out for CA stuff
7
- Landed a checkerboarding fix
8
- Landed a checkerboarding fix
9
- Startup improvements
- Tablet UI
- Locale Picker is almost ready
- Christian asked if the server side is ready
- mfinkle said that plan to use AMO for Beta and Release but working with RelEng for Nightly and Aurora to host them straight out of ftp
- Christian asked if desktop was going to do something similar down the road to reduce the need for repacks, etc
- mfinkle says currently no plans
- Axel says there are different platform considerations for desktop vs mobile which is why they aren’t the same
- Christian asked if the server side is ready
- Checkerboarding fixes
Firefox Sync
- Beta (7) – Instant Sync
- Firefox 9+:
- Improving Sync Set Up – In development. Targeting FF9.
- Push to Device – In development and finishing UX design.
- Addon Sync – In development.
Add-on Builder
- Add-on Builder has moved to weekly releases
- Next week’s release will introduce support for pushing your add-ons from the Builder directly to AMO for review and consumption
- Tentatively targeting Q1 2012 for our 1.0 launch
Add-on SDK
Release (1.0 -> Firefox 5 & 6)
- 1.0 -> 1.1 repack testing commenced last week
- AMO blocker bug identified and fixed (fix might have been pushed to production last Thursday; unclear)
- dbuc in charge of repack testing, should report back on progress today
Stabilization (1.1 -> Firefox 7)
- no blockers identified in 1.1rc1 candidate build spun last week
- final release remains on schedule for next Tuesday, September 13
- draft of release notes
Development (1.2 -> Firefox 8)
- development continues apace
- will merge to stabilization branch next Tuesday, September 13
- will spin 1.2a1 test build next Tuesday, September 13
- final release on schedule for Tuesday, October 25
Input 4.3
- 0.1 release for Grouperfish targeted for the end of this week. Integration for the end of September.
- Tell Us More slated for end of September, beginning of October. Bugzilla code is all done, waiting for resources for Input to become available.
Other Notes:
- Surveying Add-ons Developers for integrating Input into AMO. So far, so good! Next steps are to analyze the information with fligtar/Asa and talk about developer resources
Feedback Summary
Desktop
- Keyboard/mouse button bound to close doesn’t close tab but window instead. It was broken in 4 but there weren’t that many reports. In the last two weeks, hundreds. bug 685225
- Greasemonkey (in conjunction with maybe Tab Mix Plus) causes the middle-click to make new tab shortcut to stop working. They have a fix; please review.
- Lots (400+ this week) of “Exc in ev handl: TypeError: X” warnings (the next words are all over the map). I’m pretty sure at least half of these can be traced to McAfee siteadvisor.
- Perhaps higher crashes/hangs over the last two weeks. Some comments about needing to disable Flash.
- Some comments that 6.0.1/6.0.2 broke the Facebook wall (sumo link). Caused by extensions.
- I’m getting used to a higher baseline of malware. *sadface*. So, not above normal, but above pre-Firefox 5 levels.
Mobile
- 25 new threads on SUMO this week, majority of votes for existing threads are support for new devices and flash player
- Android Market reviews for Release v6 (597 total): 145 1 & 2 star ratings this week, 56=slow/unstable representing 38.7% of below-average ratings; 14 below-average ratings cited need for flash player
- Input feedback this week: 93 issues w/ release v6: 12 are flash-related, 9 are too slow
- http://www.meetup.com/Firefox-Android-superheroes/ Join Us!
UX & User Research
Mobile UX
- Ian wrote a blog post about our tablet UI last week: http://ianbarlow.wordpress.com/2011/08/30/firefox-for-tablets/ (reaction’s been very positive so far)
- more and newer mockups here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/61892693@N03/sets/72157627325688069/detail/
- Nightlies (on Honeycomb) include a lot of this right now; more landing shortly (like tabs!)
- Please try it – get yer nighty here: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/Platforms/Android
- Christian asked if we are going to use the UX repo in the future
- Repo isn’t set up to do mobile builds but we could do so
- Probably a good idea, but wasn’t needed for this particular landing
Market Insights
Desktop
- Following last week’s Gmail offline webapp for Chrome, Google have added a Google Calendar offline webapp, also exclusively for Chrome.
- Google moved Chrome Frame for non-admin access to Stable Channel. This is probably the main use case for Chrome Frame.
- Tweaks to the Chromium extensions interface show a change from “disable” being the user action, to showing checkboxes of which extensions are “enabled”.
- Samsung knocked 10% off the price of Chromebooks.
- Google showed a narrowing focus, with many projects either moving to monetise or be EOL’d. App Engine’s pricing model was criticised, and the following projects were ended: Aardvark, Desktop, Fast Flip, Google Maps API for Flash, Google Pack, Google Web Security, Image Labeler, Notebook, Sidewiki and Subscribed Links.
- NetApplications reported browser share for August showing a slight (0.25%) erosion for Firefox globally. Forecasts are that Internet Explorer will be under 50% of browser market by mid 2012 – although given the fragmentation of IE (5 major versions in market by then), it isn’t clear what “IE” is apart from a brand. Microsoft responded that IE9 share on Windows 7 is the metric they are concerned about.
- Windows 8 behind schedule? In a blog post, Steven Sinofsky indicated several Windows 8 features would not be available for the Windows 8 build to be released at BUILD.
- Windows 7 update – easier to update IE9. An update for Windows 7 made it less likely that a user needs to rebook a system after upgrading from IE8 to IE9.
- The Palemoon fork of Firefox (for Windows only) is tracking rapid release, but indicated it would not issue a 6.0.1 update, referring users instead to SUMO.
Mobile
Summary below, full update here and in your inbox.
- Opera launched an HTML5 app store aimed at TV and home entertainment devices
- Dolphin introduced Dolphin user accounts with version 6.2 of Dolphin HD, which are used for bookmark syncing
- Net Applications puts Safari as the top mobile browser, followed by Opera Mini. Stats Counter reports differently
- Baidu announced the release of an Android-based mobile OS, called Baidu Yi
- Asia-Pacific leads the world in smartphone use, reveals a survey by Google and Ipsos
Marketing, Press & Public Reaction
- Mozilla Previews Firefox For Tablets
- ‘Fennecomb’ Firefox Tablet UI Previewed by Mozilla
- Mozilla Brings the Best of Honeycomb to Firefox for Tablets
- Microsoft and Mozilla ban Dutch government root certificate
- Google, Mozilla and Microsoft ban the DigiNotar Certificate Authority in their browsers
- Firefox 6.0.1 protects against fraud Google certificate
- Mozilla’s Rapid Firefox Releases Are Killing Me
Questions, Comments, FYI
- 3.6 EOL?
- Assume the current direction: we’re doing updates until you hear differently
- Christian is talking with some people about the plan to prompt 3.6 users to go to Firefox 6+ with an advertised update
- It will be sent more widely for comment once he gets some more opinions/preferences
- New release process and a release on December 20th?
- Christian is exploring if and how we should tweak the process to not impact holidays
- Calendars you can subscribe to with all important release and migration dates are due Real Soon Now™
- Who wants to participate in a discussion about how to make a call on localizations falling behind? (Axel)
- Christian does!
Actions this week
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