Firefox/Planning/2012-07-25
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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# 99696 (US/INTL)
- 1-800-707-2533 (pin 369) Conf# 99696 (US)
- Vidyo Room: ProductCoordination
- 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.
Actions from Last Week
Basecamp
- M4 Milestone for functional complete wrapped up last week and the team has a showcase planned for later this week
- What: Showcase of where people demo what they’ve been working on over the last milestone
- Where: Mountain View “Ten Forward” (will be streamed on Air Mozilla)
- When: Thursday, July 26th 6:00pm to 7:00pm
- M5 milestone kicks off this week — wrap up feature work, bug fixing, stabilization
Firefox Desktop
Release (14, 10esr)
- Our expectation is that we’ll be fully unthrottling the 14.0.1 release today or tomorrow
- FF14.0.1 post-mortem will be held this coming Tuesday at 9AM PT (Warp Core physical, Release Coordination virtual)
Beta (15)
- FF15 beta 1 was released last Thursday
- FF15 beta 2 candidate is now available, will ship before the end of the week
Aurora (16)
- FF16 Aurora was unthrottled (desktop/mobile) last Friday
Nightly (17)
Firefox Mobile
Release (14)
Beta (15)
- All strings (but 1?) for these features have now landed on Beta
- Honeycomb Flash support will be in FF15 beta 2, released this week – please test on your tablets!
- native text selection handles bug 774938
Aurora (16)
- ARMv6 support is now being targeted for FF16, not 15
Nightly (17)
Services
Firefox Sync
Apps In the Cloud Server
Add-on SDK
Release (1.8 -> Firefox 13, 14)
Stabilization (1.9 -> Firefox 15, 16)
Development (1.10 -> Firefox 16, 17)
Landing progress:
Identity
Apps
Feedback Summary
Desktop
Top Issues:
Flash
- Flash continues to be one of our top issues. Many users were hoping that 14.0.1 would resolve the issue.
Stability
- Hanging, crashing, not responding and excessive system load. [1]
- There are quite a few reports from these users that the issue was NOT happening in 13 [2].
- Around a 20% increase in mentions of crashes, freezing, or unresponsiveness in 14.0.1 compared to 13.0.1 [3]
- Many indicate that having multiple tabs open is a significant contributor [4]
- Firefox 14.0.1/Bit Defender. Does not happen in 15 Beta. [5][6]
Netflix on Mac
- This is still one of our top issues for the week. [7] [8]
- Reports indicate that even updating Silverlight causes poor performance, jerky playback and sound issues. [9]
- Possible unconfirmed workaround is go to finder–>applications, right click on Firefox, click on “get info”, and check the box that says “open in 32-bit mode”
- We have a few users now willing to work with us 1 on 1. Information on this to follow.
Features in 14.0.1:
Click to Play
- Click to play interferes with YouTube fullscreen [10]
- Some concerns with click to play have surfaced in the SUMO community [11]
Favicon
- The removal of Favicons from the awesome bar is receiving generally negative feedback [12]. It is difficult to be precise since the descriptions can vary greatly. Might need to do more focused research.
Native Fullscreen in Mac
- Many users are excited about this update.
- One complaint is that Toolbars do not auto-hide [13]
Mobile
SUMO
- Google play reviews summary:
- last 3676 reviews of v14 averaged 4.25 stars
- first week of v14.01 reviews average 4.1 stars
- 1,435 five-star reviews already for v14.01, some quotes:
“The best browser for all platforms. I’ve been using Firefox on my computer for many years, and when I started to use Android, I missed it. Now it is my default browser on Android too, and it now days look gorgeus, and is fast!”
“Flash & FF sync I’m a happy web crawler.”
“Works great! Android version is just as good as the desktop version. Love it, its my de facto browser.”
“Amazing i have tried many browsers, but firefox has proved that it is the best.”
- Top issues in the one and two-star reviews:
- Complaints about slowness after upgrading to ICS. Research is in progress on the type of slowness and then we’ll get a bug on file.
- Crashes (HTC Evo 4G, TC Evo 3D, HTC One X, HTC G2, HTC Thunderbolt, Samsung Galaxy S3)
- Desktop view / UA switcher (fixed in v15)
- SUMO questions this week:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions?tagged=mobile
- SUMO Most requested posts this week:
(facebook, disable top sites, tablet not compatible)
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions?sort=requested&tagged=mobile
- Beta v15: reviews are positive:
-tablet support excitement
-adblock plus flash
-flash on tablets (Nexus 7″)
-copy / paste
-master password
UX & User Research
- [desktop]
- [australis] (Zhenshuo)
- [project whimsy] exploratory project to add useful and fun information in a subtle/ambient fashion (shorlander)
- example – some contextual info in new/hometab: oldest, old, new
- [stub installer] mockups screen flow (martell, madhava)
- [sign into websites] Persona Native UI mockup http://cl.ly/image/3v0s1z3O051A
- [privacy/security] Initial project plan is here: https://wiki.mozilla.org/User:Lco/FX-Privacy-and-Security-Design-I (Larissa)
- [metro] (Yuan)
- Series of bugs opened on interaction issues
- bug 774850 : Investigating long swipe to reveal tab panels and URL bar
- bug 774867: Investigating speed of hiding context UI while scrolling
- bug 774872: Implementing context UI behaviors while adding a new tab
- bug 774863: Keyboard behaviors while swiping
- bug 774352: Align tab opening behaviors with desktop Firefox
- [dev tools] Creating mockups for bug 770818 and Sketching solution for floating panels instead of dock able panels (Brian Dils)
- [Android] (Ian)
- [other]
Market Insights
Desktop / Platform
Adobe
Google
- Google announced that Chrome in Windows 8 Metro mode will support Adobe Flash and its PDF Viewer, using Chrome’s Pepper API. The post also provided some statistics on plugin usage collected from 20m Chrome users. 99.9% used Flash per month, and 58% used the PDF Viewer. Only 12% used Java.
- The Pepper API Flash Player plugin has now been turned on by default on Mac OS X in development versions of Chrome
- Drag-and-drop of entire folders now works in Chrome
- Support for playing encrypted WebM files has been added to Chromium, and the Chrome iOS browser now supports the Chrome to Mobile feature
- At the Black Hat conference this week, Trustwave announced that they had successfully evaded Google Play’s “Bouncer” security-check system by placing a malicious app into the Android market
- It appears that ChromeOS machines will soon be able to boot Ubuntu Linux, and will support the BeagleBone and Raspberry Pi ARM-based systems
Microsoft
Security
Updates
- Major software companies, including Microsoft and Symantec, kicked off “International Technology Upgrade Week”. Skype published the results of a survey which found that nearly half of consumers fail to upgrade software regularly and a quarter don’t know why they should
W3C
- The WHATWG and W3C have officially codified their split. Members of the WHATWG, including Apple, Google, Opera, and Mozilla, will continue to create a “living specification” while the W3C will focus on solidifying “snapshots” of it over time. The net effect of this will likely be that web platform innovation will speed up.
Mobile
Summary below, details following over email as soon as I finish them.
- Apple results are out: 26 million iPhones and 17 million iPads
- There were 24.9 million tablets sold in Q2, 68% of which were iPads and 29.3% Androids, according to Strategy Analytics
- Sino Market Research reported that Lenovo became the second-largest mobile brand in China, taking over Huawei and Nokia
Marketing, Press & Public Reaction
Engagement:
- We continue to focus on three areas to help us reach our ADI goals: improving the download experience, Social API, and Tiger Team campaigns
- Progress on these efforts are reported out in my Firefox Desktop report – email me if you’re not on that list (lforrest@mozilla.com)
PR:
Firefox 15 beta boasts support for Opus audio format, reduces add-on memory leaks [14]
Firefox 15 Will Finally Fix Memory Leaks Caused By Add-Ons [15]
Firefox 15 Beta Tackles Memory Leaks [16]
Firefox 15 beta brings the new Opus audio codec to the forefront [17]
Questions, Comments, FYI
- (Michael Verdi) Who do I talk to about changes to Firefox Options window? Trying to get a heads up on new preferences and changes to preferences.
Actions this week