Firefox/Planning/2012-05-30
« previous week | index | next week »
Planning Meeting Details
- Wednesdays – 11:00am PDT, 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# 95312 (US/INTL)
- 1-800-707-2533 (pin 369) Conf# 95312 (US)
- Vidyo Room: Warp Core
- Vidyo Guest URL
Contents |
Actions from Last Week
Schedule & Progress on Upcoming Releases
Kilimanjaro
- k9o triage, today, 1pm PT
Firefox Desktop
Release (12, 10esr, 3.6)
- The final round of billboard updates for 3.6->12 went out Monday
- Automatic updates with the add-on compatibility check disabled from 3.6->12 will occur in the next 2 weeks
- FF4-9 will be auto updated to FF12 indefinitely to vend desupport add-on hotfix (bug 759767)
- The next ESR update, 10.0.5, will be released on 6/5
Beta (13)
- Our final beta of FF13 went out yesterday
- First beta with Mountain Lion support
- bug 757262 – Youtube keeps playing audio after closing & bug 756250 – Netflix keeps playing after closing remain our top issues
- Please let us know if you’re running into this in the bug
- Sign-offs will occur this afternoon at 1PM PT in Warp Core
- The final build of FF13 will occur Thursday or Friday depending on the state of investigations
- Our first FF14 desktop beta will be FF14 beta 5 to line up with Fennec Native versioning see “back on the trains” diagram (note 6/15 is a moving target)
Aurora (14)
Nightly (15)
- We’re expecting PDF.js (landed in FF15) to ride the train to Aurora at the upcoming merge date
- Monday 6/4 is the last day to land FF15 changes
- Bug 307181 – (bgupdates) Eliminate wait while restarting Firefox after update (apply update in background)
- Bug 727864 – Enable DLL preloading when MozillaMaintenance service disabled prefetch
Firefox Mobile
- Fennec Native 14 beta 4 will be released before the end of the week
- XUL Fennec 10.0.5 will be released on 6/5
- XUL Fennec 14 beta 5 will be released as a security update for beta tablet users on 6/7
Nightly (15)
- Features work
- Search suggestion
- New tablet UI for native
- Reading mode
- Find in Page
- Text selection in web content
- Chromeless webapp support
Services
Firefox Sync
Apps In the Cloud Server
Add-on SDK
Release (1.7 -> Firefox 12, 13)
- Everything is looking good
Stabilization (1.8 -> Firefox 13, 14)
- Released Add-on SDK 1.8b3 yesterday
Development (1.9 -> Firefox 14, 15)
- We have three new proposals available for review and comment
- Content Scripts: ability to share content script instances in different APIs contexts.
- Disposables: a ‘dispose’ method for resource management
- Collections: a common API for all collections to make code more maintainable and easy to grok.
Identity
Apps
- Firefox Desktop 14 (Aurora) – landed
- Trying to back out this functionality – bug 750936
- Native Install
- Chromeless launch of apps
- Mozillian Marketplace Release is out! Thanks for the feedback so far!
- Please be mindful that this is an internal release and of alpha quality. Early access is limited to Mozillians and partners for testing, so please do not tweet, communicate or share screenshots, features or details about the Marketplace for now.
- Download Firefox Desktop Nightly (Fx15)
- Have a look at the wiki to learn more about the testing procedure.
- If you run into any hiccups, you can report them to apps-feedback@mozilla.com.
- Once you’re done, there’s also an online survey for you to fill out.
- Firefox Desktop 15 (Nightly)
- Working on fixing bugs – mostly fit and polish to fit Kilimanjaro requirements
- Features: Support of native installation and and chromeless launch of apps for Win and Mac OS
- Firefox Mobile 15 (Nightly) – in progress
- Features: Native Install and chromeless window launch
- Proposed marketplace bundling with Fennec is an open issue. See bug 738545
- Apps in the Cloud
- AITC client continues – desktop client at risk for FF15
- AITC Server – Completed
Feedback Summary
Desktop
Firefox 12 issues summary:
Firefox 12 is slow – Many issues combined into one thread topic [1]
[2]
[3]
Firefox 12 consumes too much memory – Many possible issues in one thread. [4]
[5]
[http://input.mozilla.org/en-US/opinion/2962987
Yahoo issues – A slight spike in the last few weeks. Seems to be related to updates to the toolbar/home page. Will monitor.
Recap:
Facebook games won’t load – Issue has stabilized.
Foxit Reader causing Hotmail issues: We’ve updated all the threads and are seeing a decrease in the reports.
PDF Issues on Mac – After blocklist we are seeing a dramatic decrease in reports. Verified the blocklist works. We have updated all the threads and created documentation.
Firefox 12 incorrectly caching pages – Fixed in 13.
FF12 praise summary, down 5% from FF11:
Update on the Flash blocklist
- The most negative feedback we’ve gotten has been from unsupported Mac users who are unable to use Flash at all.
Beta:
- Still having problems with youtube/netflix sound not disappearing when the tab is closed.
- Possibly still having the upload issue (although it could be slow updates on beta.) — Could also affect Facebook now.
Mobile
Top all-time dissatisfiers (performance and flash) are fixed in Firefox for Android beta. Five-star ratings continue to pour in; themes:
- Firefox reinvented Wow. I have to say that I’m really impressed with the speed. It is even faster than Opera in most cases. Good job Mozilla, looks like you have nailed it this time.;-)
- Jawdroppingly Fast Even on my 2 year old phone. I knew you would come through Mozilla.
- Mozilla got it right Fast, responsive, simple, and looks great.
- Remarkably stable for beta –FF is really fast and desktops load well. Like it better than built-in browser.
Issue to mitigate: as a prerequisite to pairing a device running FF14 android release, users must uninstall beta and aurora if they were syncing data.
UX & User Research
Market Insights
Desktop / Platform
Adobe
- Adobe released an updated version of Adobe Shadow, their mobile/desktop synchronized viewing and editing tool for mobile websites and web apps
- Google Play now supports in-app subscription billing for applications
- The Chromium development team made further improvements to their Field Trials infrastructure (somewhat analogous to Firefox’s Telemetry), and encouraged contributors to make use of them
- The Chrome Security Team posted a detailed summary of how “PinkiePie” managed to break out of the Chrome sandbox during the last Pwnium competition. A chain of six different bugs, including two in Native Client, were used. A total of 16 zero-day vulnerabilities were revealed during the contest
- Google released updated versions of the Chromebook and introduced the Chromebox. Potential customers in the United States and the UK will be able to try them out at selected retail stores, while enterprise customers will benefit from a number of new features, including cost-effective Windows virtualization. The new version of the Chromebook’s UI, “Aura”, also was made available to existing Chromebook users.
- Google has “a matter of weeks” to address four antitrust issues identified by European Union antitrust regulators.
- SPDY/3 is now available to 95% of Chrome users
- A Chrome developer posted a good introduction to the browser’s initial implementation of Web Intents
- StatCounter, which measures browser share page view, not users, said that Chrome had now surpassed Microsoft Internet Explorer as the world’s most popular browser.
Microsoft
- It appears that Adobe Flash will be permitted to run in the Metro version of MSIE10 on Windows 8
Motorola
- Google finally closed its $12.5b purchase of Motorola Mobility
Opera
- Rumours are swirling about a possible purchase of Opera Software by Facebook. Besides its desktop, mobile, and embedded browsers, Opera also serves ~30b mobile ads per month via its advertising networks, operates a mobile application store with 30,000 apps.
WebOS
- The HP team responsible for Enyo — webOS’s HTML5-based application framework that debuted on the TouchPad — will be leaving the company and starting at Google shortly
Yahoo!
- Yahoo! launched Axis, what it describes as a new browser. Provided as a browser plugin for Firefox, Chrome and MSIE on desktops, it is a full wrapper around UIWebView on iOS. Media coverage has on the whole been positive. It offers a tighter integration between search, with thumbnails shown instead of search results.
Mobile
Summary below and full update here and in your inbox.
- Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility has completed regulatory approvals
- Rumours on a possible purchase of Opera Software by Facebook have surfaced, together with recurring ones on a possible Facebook phone
- Google introduced subscriptions for its In-app billing monetization feature
- The trial between Google and Oracle is ending in favour of Google
- Mobile payments rising to $171 billion and 212 million users, fueled by SMS and Web-based transactions
- 20% of Web traffic in the US and Canada to come from smartphones and tablets, according to online advertising network
- 40% of Chinese Web surfers to be doing so mobile-only
Marketing, Press & Public Reaction
Marketing
- Preparing final collateral for next week’s releases.
Press
- Browser choice: A thing of the past?
- Browser wars heat up in mobile space
- Mozilla Thimble Teaches You HTML and CSS with a Side-by-Side HTML Editor
- Learn to Code With Mozilla’s ‘Thimble’ Editor
Questions, Comments, FYI
- Michael Verdi – Who can I talk to about the new identity block? I need information about this for support documentation.