Meeting Notes Meetings notes from the Mozilla community

Schedule & Progress onUpcoming Releases (Lawrence)

• Firefox 35.0 shipped yesterday, updates enabled at 25%
  • May need a 35.0.1 to fix a tile drawing bug (bug 1083079), which manifests as bug 1085024
• Firefox 36 beta1 ships Thursday
• Firefox 37 Aurora updates scheduled to be re-enabled on Friday

• Note: 38 (currently Nightly) will be the next ESR.

• Want all merge and release days included in your calendar? Add this Google calendar.

Firefox Desktop & Platform (Javaun/Chad/Martin)

38.1 started yesterday. Recap from last week on priorities

– Hello:

 - wrapping up Firefox 36/37 work, getting started on 38 (with a focus on sharing)

– Task Continuity:

 - finishing UX design work for Reading List/Synced Tabs
 - research work support those features
 - investigating sync back-end changes needed to support them

– Search:

 - continue to address important regressions from the Firefox 34 work
 - UX design/research for next steps in search UI improvements

– Password Management:

 - focus on telemetry to begin improving filling/saving reliability

– Sync Migration:

 - finishing the migration work needed to start migrating "old sync" users to "new sync" in Firefox 37

– Places:

 - continue the refactorings needed to avoid main-thread IO

– E10S:

 - continue supporting the e10s team in pushing through the e10s milestones

Also:
Privacy:
Some UI exploration for privacy and some work on research/telemetry experiments on Tracking Protection

Some EME bugs

Feedback Summary (Cheng/Tyler/Matt)

Desktop

Release going smoothly, nothing to report yet

Contributor Engagement

Mike Hoye announcing the revamp of a community-engagement onramp, to ship end of Q1

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
• AirMozilla: for broadcast and saved recordings

Schedule & Progress onUpcoming Releases (Lukas/Sylvestre/Lawrence)

• Desktop 35.0 RC build 2 is now with QA after having to rebuild for bug 1076975, a late-arrival
• Mobile 35.0 build delayed for bug 1073554 – we’re looking at the options here including shipping with the regression and doing a 35.0.1 once a verified fix is ready
• ESR 31.4.0 on track
• We’ll be moving the updates enabling by 4 days this cycle which means that we release next Tuesday, collect feedback for a few days and then enable updates at 100% on the Friday same week. First time experiment with this more rapid process.
• Merge Day is on Monday Jan 12th.

Firefox Desktop & Platform (Javaun/Chad/Martin)

There wasn’t an official 37.3 iteration, due to holidays, but we start 38.1 next Tuesday. The areas of focus are:
Hello:

• wrapping up Firefox 36/37 work, getting started on 38 (with a focus on sharing)

Task Continuity:

• finishing UX design work for Reading List/Synced Tabs
• research work support those features
• investigating sync back-end changes needed to support them

Search:

• continue to address important regressions from the Firefox 34 work
• UX design/research for next steps in search UI improvements

Password Management:

• focus on telemetry to begin improving filling/saving reliability

Sync Migration:

• finishing the migration work needed to start migrating “old sync” users to “new sync” in Firefox 37

Places:

• continue the refactorings needed to avoid main-thread IO

E10S:

• continue supporting the e10s team in pushing through the e10s milestones

Polaris Privacy Work:

• Tor relays: doing tech spec’ing this week. NetOps/Opsec are designing this week, may start hardware work next week.
• User testing on Tracking Protection (Polaris pref in Nightly) starts next week. Questions to answer:
  • what do users think about tracking? Does our experience meet their needs?
  • Do we break their experience, and if so do they accept the tradeoff or blame the browser.

Developer Tools (Jeff)

• Goals planning
• new performance tools are coming together nicely
• 21 bugs fixed last week, despite the holidays

Feedback Summary (Cheng/Tyler/Matt)

Desktop

• No significant change in Hello feedback for 35: Still very, very low amounts of feedback. Most negative (non-prompted) feedback people who don’t want it. One comment on the branding (Telefonica/O2).
• Only spike in negative feedback around the break was around the donation campaign which was viewed as spammy (especially since people got it even after they donated).

Marketing, Press & Public Reaction (Arcadio or Winston)

• Dev browser campaign / message testing
• Search hijackers
• Yahoo optimization
• Hello

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
• AirMozilla: for broadcast and saved recordings

Schedule & Progress onUpcoming Releases (Lawrence)

• Mobile 34.0.1 gtb today with fixes for
  • bug 1110499 – Crash reporter does not work in Android L
  • bug 1108627 – Regression: market-specific search defaults (desktop) broke default engine behavior for Fennec
  • May also include bug 1105590

• 35 beta4 shipped today
• Modified Beta schedule for holidays (from dev-planning post)
  • Week 3 – Dec 15-19: Beta 4 (Desktop & Mobile) and Beta 5 (Desktop) build & ship as usual
  • Week 4 – Dec 22-26: Beta 6 (Desktop & Mobile) gtb on Monday Dec 22 as usual, ship on Tues Dec 23 – no further betas
  • Week 5 – Dec 29-Jan 2: Beta 8 (Desktop & Mobile) gtb on Monday Dec 29 as usual, ship on Tues Dec 30 – no further betas
  • Week 6 – Jan 5-9: Beta 10 (Mobile) and Desktop RC 35.0 gtb on Monday Jan 5th, ship on Tues Jan 6 to beta channels

Feedback Summary (Cheng/Tyler/Matt)

Desktop

Flash is causing a lot of pain for our users.

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
• AirMozilla: for broadcast and saved recordings

Schedule & Progress onUpcoming Releases (Lukas/Sylvestre/Lawrence)

• 34.0.5 (yahoo search default) updates enabled 100%
• possible 34.0.1 Android release
• 35.0b2 Desktop shipped yesterday
• 35.0b3 Desktop & 35.0b2 mobile go to build tomorrow

Feedback Summary (Cheng/Tyler/Matt)

Desktop

• Tracking the following:
  • Firefox 34 + Youtube = black box
  • Silverlight newest update not working bug 1109484
  • Yahoo feedback
  • Search UI changes feedback

General

• Working hard on getting some version of Heartbeat out by 36
• Trying to get the about:support API into Input

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
• AirMozilla: for broadcast and saved recordings

Schedule & Progress onUpcoming Releases (Lukas/Sylvestre/Lawrence)

• 34 Desktop
  • 34.0 RC ships to Beta today
  • 34.0.5 RC ships to Beta on Friday

• merge from m-c -> m-a and m-a -> m-b happening on Friday
• 35 beta1 scheduled to ship Thu, Dec 4
• 36 Aurora updates scheduled to be re-enabled on Fri, Dec 5

Developer Tools (Jeff)

• Outbound
  • Dev Edition: 257,964 Downloads, 399,964 Installs
  • Actual toolbox usage has spiked past Beta in week two, we have ‘heavier’ users spending more time in the tools.
• Landings
  • Lots of work on e10s
  • Perf tools work is starting to land
  • 27 bugs resolved

Insights

Worth a Read

• The Chrome Dev Summit 2014 Keynote is available on Youtube and is worth a watch. It starts with an overview of how Chrome now has 400MM actives, and a refocusing on web content as a first-class citizen. It feels somewhat odd until you realize where ad networks play into the web, but it’s a good overview of a lot of the items we’ve covered on Lollipop, and how Google is looking at using Chrome as yet another lens. Lots of other good stuff from the Summit as well if you’re interested.
• The Q3 Mobile Overview Report from scientiamobile is available. Interesting directional information on form factors, screen sizes, and usage of mobile devices by geography. Make sure you read the Reports Specifications part. Data used to compile this report is also available for viewing/remixing at http://www.scientiamobile.com/page/movr-mobile-overview-report

Notes

• Google’s added a security tab to your Google Account, making it easier to see what devices have connected to your account and when across platforms, as well as simplifying revoking access to individual devices.
• Microsoft is adding an Enterprise support mode to IE11, designed to help Enterprises who have legacy apps that don’t work with modern browsers. High-fidelity emulators = the old code that just won’t die.
• Google has agreed to settle with Rockstar, indicating that Apple and Google may focus on products for a while vs. patent litigation. Terms haven’t been announced, but it wouldn’t surprise people if there was portfolio licensing involved, which may also impact Samsung.
• The Chrome team updated its NPAPI deprecation plan, with NPAPI support ending in September 2015.
• News from the EU suggests that you’ll see more antitrust actions against Google in the coming months. Not surprising given some of the strategies Google is employing to add value and afinity to its brand, and bears watching.
• Some (usually bang-on) analysts are predicting Apple will have a blowout quarter in shipping iPhones. Added bonus, The Register points out the obvious of people having little spending money after the holidays, resulting in a 50% drop compared to the holidays in Q1. Apple’s market cap broke the $700B level today on the strong sales of the iPhone 6 and expected holiday sales. That’s a lot of iThings.
• Windows Phone as number two in the enterprise behind Apple? Maybe. Plausible.
• Just in time for holiday shopping, Google changes search up a bit on mobile to give you product information at your fingertips. Good example of how they can change the experience to match behaviours they see, and an opportunity to experiment with better monetization on mobile.
• Chromebooks new and old are getting 1TB of Google Drive storage included with them. Related to this, updates to Chrome OS include support for playing media and launching apps from Google Drive.
• iOS 8.1.1 isn’t as awesome as Apple would like, so they’re allowing downgrades to 8.1 (this isn’t usually a thing). iOS 8 really hasn’t been a banner release.
• Divide, a company focused on providing ways to separate personal life from work on your mobile device, has launched a preview on Play. Divide is a Google acquisition, and their product is intended to provide similar functionality to what BBOS gives its corporate users. Sign-up (and general information) on the product is available on the Google site.
• Google updated Now just in time for Lollipop updates; added bonus: coin-flipping (srsly).

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
• AirMozilla: for broadcast and saved recordings

Schedule & Progress onUpcoming Releases (Lukas/Sylvestre/Lawrence)

• Pushing out 34 by one week for stability reasons
• Merge day on Friday 11/28
• Check in with lmandel with any specific questions

Firefox Desktop & Platform (Javaun/Chad/Martin)

Current Releases

Beta (34)

• MP4/AAC/h264 support is moving to 35 and has been prefed off in 34 on OSX

Nightly (36)

• The plan is to default e10s off on Monday so we get a few days before the merge to shake out any issues
• MSE using WebM has landed in nightly prefed on by default on all desktop platforms in nightly.
  • MP4/AAC will be enabled on by default on windows vista, windows 7, windows 8 at some point over the next week.
    • To get the best results for testing, WebM will be turned off on the above windows platforms to force MP4 usage.

Firefox Mobile (Mark/Brad/Jenn)

Current Releases

Beta (34)

• The new MediaCodec based media back end has been uplifted to beta and is in the beta 10 candidate build. Our plan is to ship this to 34 release to fix mp4 video playback for Android L users.

Developer Tools (Jeff)

• Dev Edition Roundup
  • Feedback: huge increase in submissions to uservoice, ~80 in the last week ( previous average was 7-8 )
  • Outbound: big discussion on mozhacks, reddit and hacker news
  • Telemetry graphs show strong uptick in usage of the devtools in Aurora, echoing downloads and ADI numbers we’ve seen.
  • ‘Beta Doorhanger’ goes live soon (?)
• Landings
  • 31 Bugs fixed

Market Insights from the Market Strategy Team (Kev)

Kev is unavailable this week. Will post to planet and backfill here.

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
• AirMozilla: for broadcast and saved recordings

Schedule & Progress onUpcoming Releases (Lukas/Sylvestre/Lawrence)

• 33 beta 9 desktop gtb tomorrow (last desktop beta)
• 33 beta 10 mobile gtb Monday (last mobile beta)
• 33 release candidates build Mon/Tue next week

• Upcoming Aurora uplifts
  • Loop changes
  • OSX Gatekeeping v2 signature changes landing on Nightly this week. Still targeting 34 for this change (uplift coming shortly)
  • CloudSync uplift landing this week (bug 993584)

Firefox Desktop & Platform (Javaun/Chad/Martin)

Summary of Work In Progress

• You can see the status of the current iteration (35.3) in progress here

Summary of Recent Landings

• Team landed 80 bugs over the last week, to complete the 35.2 iteration.
• Details of landings from the past week can be seen here

Priorities for the upcoming iteration

• e10s on Nightly
• Loop:
  • finalize accounts/contacts work
  • UX: design spike looking into “collaboration” use cases
• “Panic button”: better-exposed “Clear Recent History” functionality
• “Reset button on the web”: a mechanism to prompt users to reset Firefox when they try to download Firefox when already running the latest version
• OS X Yosemite themeing work
• New tab page performance investigations
• Places performance work (main thread IO removal)
• Translation trial followup

Firefox Mobile (Mark/Brad/Jenn)

Work In Progress

• Progress on MediaCodec patches
• Investigation into standalone WebRTC
• Cloudsync
• Janus Proxy– fixes & improvements
• Lots of activity around Toolbar Refresh (bug 1071267 bug 1019127 bug 960746 bug 1070087 bug 1072464 bug 1072469 bug 1075531)
• Second Screen (bug 1054959 bug 1074567

You can find more on upcoming feature plans in the[roadmap]

Uplifts from the past week

Beta (33)

• crash in mozilla::gfx::AlphaBoxBlur::Blur(unsigned char*) ( Bug 1028802 )
• crash in mozilla::gfx::SourceSurfaceAlignedRawData::InitWithStride(mozilla::gfx::IntSizeTyped<mozilla::gfx::UnknownUnits> const&, mozilla::gfx::SurfaceFormat, int, bool) ( Bug 1067018 )
• crash in android.content.res.Resources$NotFoundException: Resource is not a Drawable (color or path): TypedValue{t=0x1/d=$ a=3 r=$} at android.content.res.Resources.loadDrawable(Resources.java) ( Bug 1067429 )
• [roku] add a ‘beta’ label to the Roku channel until client code hits ‘release’ ( Bug 1068573 )

Aurora (34)

• Add telemetry for Settings usage ( Bug 996753 )
• Visible seams on the page (maybe at tile borders?) ( Bug 1009306 )
• Disable downloads and extension installs in guest mode ( Bug 1046941 )
• crash in webrtc::ViEInputManager::NumberOfCaptureDevices() ( Bug 1063547 )

Landings from the past week

Nightly (35)

• Send NS_NETWORK_LINK_DATA_CHANGED events on Android ( Bug 1024614 )
• WebApp startup slowed significantly by debug server ( Bug 1034114 )
• crash in java.lang.NullPointerException: at org.mozilla.gecko.home.PinSiteDialog$3.onFocusChange(PinSiteDialog.java) ( Bug 1041448 )
• APKs for previous versions of Nightly and Aurora stick around in Downloads ( Bug 1051654 )
• Performing searches with Wikipedia search engine immediately launches Fennec ( Bug 1063193 )
• crash in java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Wifi:Enable was not registered at org.mozilla.gecko.EventDispatcher.unregisterListener(EventDispatcher.java) ( Bug 1063541 )
• The URL displayed under tab titles in the Synced Tabs panel disappears for a while after choosing “Open in New Tab”/”Open in Private Tab” ( Bug 1064162 )
• Synced Tabs panel shouldn’t be present in Guest Mode ( Bug 1064177 )
• Firefox: User doesn’t go back to the channel after watching video till the end ( Bug 1068633 )
• Android crash in mozilla::image::RasterImage::DecodeSomeData ( Bug 1069369 )
• Selecting “No video” and “No audio” options from the permission prompt still shows the content of the device camera and the audio active ( Bug 1070989 )
• System download manager needs a build time pref ( Bug 1071091 )
• Form autocomplete dialog can take up the entire screen and make it really hard to use fennec ( Bug 1071738 )
• Tapping sometimes triggers two clicks ( Bug 1071758 )
• crash in java.lang.NullPointerException: at org.mozilla.gecko.db.PerProfileDatabases.getDatabaseHelperForProfile(PerProfileDatabases.java) ( Bug 1072332 )
• Regression: Open/Close animation of the tabs tray and menu is sluggish ( Bug 1072376 )
• Issues with hidden/unhidden devices on Synced Tabs ( Bug 1072954 )

Feedback Summary (Cheng/Tyler/Matt)

Desktop

• OMTC removal caused a spike in “blackouts” but now that it’s back, it seems to be going down.

Market Insights from the Market Strategy Team (Kev)

Read-only notes this week. Apologies, folks. – kev

Notes

• The Windows 10 (insert OS X joke here) technical preview is available. Interestingly, there are 32 and 64 bit versions, potentially putting to rest speculation that it’d be 64-bit only. Potentially.
• Google is apparently continuing to expand bundling requirements for branded Android phones, including expanding the number of apps that must be included, and a reported requirement for apps to render web pages with Google’s WebView component (vs. other engines)
• Huawei has launched a $325 superphone in India (octo-core, 3GB ram, 1080p screen, etc.), impressive specs as chipsets announced at MWC earlier this year finally start making it into the market
• Firefox has been named PC Magazine’s Editor’s Choice for browsers
• Net Applications is reporting an increase in IE8 users, likely from corporate (and other) upgrades from Windows XP.
• While it’s been around for a couple weeks, the Cosmos Browser app for Androidis getting some mentions for its unique approach. No data plan required, but everything’s sent via SMS/MMS.
• Adobe is bringing Photoshop to Chromebooks, addressing one of the knocks against the platform’s inability to run popular speciality software. Note that it’s a streaming version, and continues a trend of streaming client apps to a remote/mobile client/

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
• AirMozilla: for broadcast and saved recordings

Schedule & Progress onUpcoming Releases (Lukas/Sylvestre/Lawrence)

• CHEMSPILL: Shipping today
  • Firefox 32.0.3 (desktop and mobile)
  • Firefox ESR 31.1.1 and 24.8.1
  • Firefox for Android 31.1.0
  • 33 beta7 (out of band)

• Note: In 33 beta7 we have disabled OMTC to gather stability data. The plan is to re-enable OMTC in beta8.

Firefox Desktop & Platform (Javaun/Chad/Martin)

Summary of Work In Progress

• You can see the status of the current iteration (35.2) in progress here

Beta (33)

• Provide info when “Show More Information” is selected for the OpenH264 plugin in the addon manager ( Bug 1039028 )
• Backslashes included in a location bar input are converted to forward slashes on submission ( Bug 1042521 )
• Autocomplete drop down list item should not be copied to the search fields when mouse over the list item ( Bug 1060888 )
• Make the search suggestions popup on about:home/about:newtab more consistent with the main search bar’s popup for 33 ( Bug 1066794 )
• Picture tag will not ride the trains to release in 33. (Bug 1017875)

Aurora (34)

• Provide info when “Show More Information” is selected for the OpenH264 plugin in the addon manager ( Bug 1039028 )
• Backslashes included in a location bar input are converted to forward slashes on submission ( Bug 1042521 )
• Tab-modal onbeforeunload dialog can automatically be dismissed by navigation ( Bug 1046022 )
• Theme switcher in customize mode can’t handle many themes ( Bug 1060623 )
• Autocomplete drop down list item should not be copied to the search fields when mouse over the list item ( Bug 1060888 )
• Missing inverted panel help icon on Yosemite ( Bug 1060944 )
• toolkit/themes/osx/global/in-content/common.css uses broken @focusRingShadow@ – focused link styling on about:preferences et al. can’t be parsed correctly ( Bug 1062843 )
• Disable e10s in safe mode (“Restart with Add-ons Disabled”) ( Bug 1063848 )
• Make the search suggestions popup on about:home/about:newtab more consistent with the main search bar’s popup for 33 ( Bug 1066794 )

Summary of Recent Landings

• Loop Firefox Account login UI will be in tomorrow’s Nightly
• Team landed 82 bugs over the last week, for the first half of the 35.2 iteration.
• Details of landings from the past week can be seen here

Priorities for the upcoming iteration

• e10s on Nightly
• Loop:
  • finalize accounts/contacts work
  • UX: design spike looking into “collaboration” use cases
• “Panic button”: better-exposed “Clear Recent History” functionality
• “Reset button on the web”: a mechanism to prompt users to reset Firefox when they try to download Firefox when already running the latest version
• OS X Yosemite themeing work
• New tab page performance investigations
• Places performance work (main thread IO removal)
• Translation trial followup

Firefox Mobile (Mark/Brad/Jenn)

Work In Progress

• Crash Reporter improvements
• Suggested Sites Metrics
• Search Activity
• “Firefox Confidential” add-on
• Second Screen
• Janus Proxy (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/Janus)

You can find more on upcoming feature plans in the[roadmap]

Uplifts from the past week

Beta (33)

• Lightweight theme preview is broken ( Bug 887755 )
• Add telemetry for Settings usage ( Bug 996753 )
• crash in mozilla::layers::TileClient::GetBackBuffer(nsIntRegion const&, mozilla::layers::TextureClientPool*, bool*, bool) ( Bug 1041744 )
• Crash in gfxContext::PushNewDT (OOM) with reproducible test-case (reddit.com) ( Bug 1053934 )
• Do not allow casting UI to appear if the video is an unsupported format ( Bug 1054920 )
• Handle HomeFragment deletions by panel/type instead of universally ( Bug 1062257 )
• crash in java.lang.NullPointerException: uriString at android.net.Uri$StringUri.<init>(Uri.java) ( Bug 1062904 )
• “Learn More” link for the Mozilla Location Service is visible on Beta/Release despite MLS setting not available ( Bug 1063518 )
• crash in webrtc::ViEInputManager::NumberOfCaptureDevices() ( Bug 1063547 )
• Regression: missing thumbnails in top sites; thumbnails replaced with tiny Favicons ( Bug 1063896 )
• Fix OOM crash in gfxAlphaBoxBlur::Init on large blur surface ( Bug 1067998 )

Aurora (34)

• Regression: Browser menu has width issues ( Bug 1020505 )
• Regression: No context menu action is invoked on long-tapping some links ( Bug 1062307 )

Landings from the past week

Nightly (35)

• [guest] Provide an indicator for guest mode in the UI ( Bug 897711 )
• Add support for element.style[“css-property-name”] non-standard extension ( Bug 958887 )
• Add android:summary text to settings ( Bug 965377 )
• Remove margins on default home screen panels ( Bug 1022472 )
• Clearing timer in Firefly shutdown is racy and not needed ( Bug 1042513 )
• [Roku] Add marketing messages and imagery to the Firefox Roku channel ( Bug 1056040 )
• Update Remote Tabs static panel styling for portrait phones ( Bug 1063765 )
• Lost the ability to collapse (and then expand) a device’s tab set in the synced tabs panel ( Bug 1064304 )
• Default specific prefs for ‘Firefox Confidential’ ( Bug 1064947 )
• Add “version” (and “channel”?), nix “source” in about:feedback submission ( Bug 1066062 )
• Can not install web apps; ” A coding exception was thrown and uncaught in a Task. Gecko: Full message: TypeError: aMessage.app.updateManifest is undefined” ( Bug 1066604 )
• crash in java.lang.IllegalStateException: Error reading list.txt at org.mozilla.search.providers.SearchEngineManager.getAllEngines(SearchEngineManager.java) ( Bug 1067026 )
• crash in android.content.res.Resources$NotFoundException: Resource is not a Drawable (color or path): TypedValue{t=0x1/d=$ a=3 r=$} at android.content.res.Resources.loadDrawable(Resources.java) ( Bug 1067429 )
• Android action handler ‘Send tab to’: Don’t offer ‘Reading list’ action if it has been turned off (low-memory devices) ( Bug 1067543 )
• ‘New Tablet UI’ preference available on phones ( Bug 1068005 )
• [roku] add a ‘beta’ label to the Roku channel until client code hits ‘release’ ( Bug 1068573 )
• Firefox :: Options popup could not be closed by pressing * btn ( Bug 1068641 )
• Unable to exit out of Guest Browsing via system notification ( Bug 1069182 )

Market Insights from the Market Strategy Team (Kev)

Worth a Read

• Lots of talk on Privacy in the last week, with Tim Cook sending out an open letter around Apple’s efforts on Privacy and several stories on how Apple won’t have access to your phone data if encryption is on, followed quickly by Google saying Android L will have a similar feature (although there’s some hard questions on what effect that will have on the Android user base given Android’s fragmentation and update problems). This was then followed by articles going over that just because Apple and Google can’t get your data, law enforcement still can in a number of ways, although they’re not too chuffed about the changes. Long story short, organizations have realized that privacy means something to people, and are working to improve how their products protect users along with improve how those companies represent themselves (market themselves) to users. This will continue to be a big deal, but what the changes actually mean for users remain to be seen.
• Apple continues to develop Safari on iOS and other platforms, adding capability to its platform to maintain compatibility with the web as an adjunct to its (huge) native ecosystem. They’ve learned some lessons from other competitors including Google and Microsoft, and are ensuring the rendering engine stays modern. Users will need modern devices to take advantage of the updates, and with iOS reported as not working terribly well on the 4S, it’s one of the first big fragmentations Apples mobile platform might see (the iPhone 4S and 4 represent about 20% and 10% of the iPhone’s market respectively), even with iOS adoption hitting 46% in a week.
• As a follow-up to last week’s Android One overview, BGR India posted a review of Spice’s Android One phone offering, the $100USD Uno, and India Today reviews the Micromax Canvas. In a nutshell: an ok screen, Nexus-like software experience with acceptable performance, crappy battery life, a requirement of external storage to use media, and a price that feels higher than it should be. These are first generation models, and as software and hardware is updated over the coming months we’ll see if they can close the gap perceived between Android One phones and phones like the Moto E (which is a little more expensive, but not much).

Notes

• Service Workers progress was shown off by Google’s Alex Russell at last week’s Velocity conference, talking about better offline and online experiences.
• Google updates Chrome Apps for Mobile (their webapp runtime for Android and iOS), bringing enhanced dev tools to the platform and identity, Google cloud support, and rich notification support to web apps.
• Putting the iPhone 6 launch in context with other Apple product launches in a simple chart. The number of units shipped being thrown around is 10MM at an average price of more than $700USD. Bam.
• There were a number of reports that Apple was shuttering the Beats music streaming service. It’s not, but expect to see some major retooling to complete with Spotify, Rdio, and other incumbents globally.
• Google continues to refine it’s Now offering on iOS, adding TV recommendations, better/more transit options, and overall performance improvements, showing it will push product improvements x-platform.
• The Archon hack allows users to run most Android apps on Chrome OS.
• Apple’s put some effort into helping you move from Android to iOS with a support section specifically on how to take your data with you.
• Google continues to relax its pushing of Google+ on users, this time removing the + account creation requirement for new Gmail accounts.

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
• AirMozilla: for broadcast and saved recordings

Schedule & Progress onUpcoming Releases (Lukas/Sylvestre/Lawrence)

• 32.0.1 updates are disabled
• 32.0.2 driver
  • bug 1063052 Firefox 32+ startup crash in nsFrame::BoxReflow

• 33 beta4 desktop released yesterday
• 33 beta4 mobile released today

• lmandel is soliciting feedback on 32. If you didn’t attend yesterday’s post mortem, please send feedback via e-mail.

Firefox Desktop & Platform (Javaun/Chad/Martin)

Summary of Work In Progress

• You can find the most recently completed iteration (35.1) performance report here
• You can see the status of the current iteration (35.1) in progress here
• OMTC maybe in 33 if some linger issues can be resolved, more next week on this once final determination can be made. (Bug 899785)
• Picture Tag is currently slated for 33 but may push back to 34 depending on the outcome of some bugs currently being investigated. (Bug 1017875)

Uplifts

Beta (33)

• Enhance tiles more specifically than eTLD+1/baseDomain (e.g., no enhance bugzilla.mozilla.org for mozilla.org) ( Bug 1045760 )
• Include OpenH264 plugin in FHR data ( Bug 1053745 )
• Avoid flushing layout and making it dirty repeatedly in ToolbarIconColor.inferFromText ( Bug 1061947 )

Aurora (34)

• Undo the pref for the temporary hangserver for beta channels until Socorro is awesome ( Bug 791244 )
• Backslashes included in a location bar input are converted to forward slashes on submission ( Bug 1042521 )
• Tab-modal onbeforeunload dialog can automatically be dismissed by navigation ( Bug 1046022 )
• Missing inverted panel help icon on Yosemite ( Bug 1060944 )
• toolkit/themes/osx/global/in-content/common.css uses broken @focusRingShadow@ – focused link styling on about:preferences et al. can’t be parsed correctly ( Bug 1062843 )
• disable unified autocomplete for Firefox 34 ( Bug 1064776 )

Summary of Recent Landings

• Team landed 42 bugs over the last week, to close out the 35.1 iteration.
• Details of landings from the past week can be seen here

Firefox Mobile (Mark/Brad/Jenn)

Work In Progress

• Browser toolbar refresh bug 1058909
• WebRTC OpenGL on Roku – fixing and tweaking
• Moz Stumbler currently off due to start time regression bug 1064677
• Janus https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/Janus
  • investigating performance issues
  • looking into <picture> element injection
  • Adding TCP/socket stats

You can find more on upcoming feature plans in the[roadmap]

Uplifts from the past week

Beta (33)

• Remove gradients from form elements ( Bug 763671 )
• Lightweight theme preview is broken ( Bug 887755 )
• crash in java.lang.NullPointerException: at org.mozilla.gecko.home.PinSiteDialog$3.onFocusChange(PinSiteDialog.java) ( Bug 1041448 )
• crash in mozilla::layers::TileClient::GetBackBuffer(nsIntRegion const&, mozilla::layers::TextureClientPool*, bool*, bool) ( Bug 1041744 )
• Regression: Back button icon missing in menu on some small screen (?) hardware (?) devices ( Bug 1062338 )
• “Learn More” link for the Mozilla Location Service is visible on Beta/Release despite MLS setting not available ( Bug 1063518 )
• crash in webrtc::ViEInputManager::NumberOfCaptureDevices() ( Bug 1063547 )
• crash in java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: android.os.Bundle.getString at org.mozilla.gecko.preferences.GeckoPreferences.setupPreferences(GeckoPreferences.java) ( Bug 1065531 )

Aurora (34)

• Regression: Browser menu has width issues ( Bug 1020505 )
• Too many differing background greys throughout the browser ( Bug 1055536 )
• crash in java.lang.IllegalStateException: Already registered Wifi:Enable at org.mozilla.gecko.EventDispatcher.registerListener(EventDispatcher.java) ( Bug 1061030 )
• Regression: No context menu action is invoked on long-tapping some links ( Bug 1062307 )
• Use empty string as title if no title provided when adding a bookmark ( Bug 1062552 )

Landings from the past week

Nightly (35)

• Synchronous initialization of search service when handling open search tag ( Bug 1017903 )
• [Roku] Removing an entry from history will only take effect after restarting the Roku app ( Bug 1025923 )
• about:home is unresponsive to hardware menu button on returning to main activity on 2.3 devices ( Bug 1058027 )
• [roku] update wording in the public roku channel app ( Bug 1064222 )
• Search activity startup crash @ java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Couldnt find search engine for identifier: yahoo at org.mozilla.search.providers.SearchEngineManager.createEngine(SearchEngineManager.java) ( Bug 1065123 )
• Regression: Downloading is broken ( Bug 1066671 )

Market Insights from the Market Strategy Team (Kev)

Something to Think About

The stock Android browser, which is the default browser on Android versions below 4.4, has a vulnerability that allows malicious sites to bypass the same-origin policy and execute an XSS attack. Metasploit contains a live exploit for the bug, which could potentially affect more than half of Android browser users. Updating the stock browser is not really something that’s been done since Kitkat came out, although Google has apparently said they’ll launch a fix, it’s just unclear how that fix will be delivered.
Why we should care: A continually updated, modern browser that works on the majority of Android devices is something every Android user should want (and know about). Firefox for Android meets that need, and we should consider reminding people of the risk and solutions that Firefox brings to older versions of Android.

Worth a Read

• Google launched Android One in India Monday. They’re using a familiar “the next x billion Internet users” line, and tying “One” to the user. Lots of hardware partners with MediaTek and Qualcomm as the chipset providers, with some phones coming with data included for installing apps from Google Play to help drive use, some region-specific features (like dual sim support, offline YouTube, monthly included data for the play store, etc.), and Google managing the software update process. Also notes on intent to expand through Southeast Asia in the near future. Android One website
• Google appears to be experimenting with making simple searches a little more useful in Chrome on Android. A flag can be set to enable answers (accessed via chrome:flags), which makes use of the search suggest facility to deliver more than just keywords. Search monetization and use has been more difficult on mobile, and this is a good example of some of the ways search providers are going to look to make search more of a go-to, and perhaps generate revenue from for things like location specific results, promotion weighting, etc. Answers has also been available on Desktop Chrome for a while, but the answers delivered are more limited than what’s being delivered on mobile.

Notes

• Google announced the gradual sunsetting of support for SHA-1 last week, where Google will no longer report SHA-1 certs as fully trustworthy (missed this, sorry)
• Chrome on OSX will be 64-bit only starting with release 39, and any 32-bit NPAPI plugins will no longer work on OSX (a 64-bit version of Chrome for Windows is also currently available)
• Joe Britt, the lead of Google@Home, has reportedly left the company amid additional news of Google’s own Android TV hardware offering (which has been shipped as a dev kit) being nixed. This has led to some question and speculation around the future of Google@Home and, with recent acquisitions in the space and the success of Chromecast, it may be repurposed, sourced to one of those orgs, or handed to a HW partner instead.
• Roku announces it has sold more than 10M units in the US
• Google Play store extends refund period from 15min to 2hrs after purchase
• Some Android apps can now run on your Chromebook, thanks to NaCl
• Videos on Google Drive can now be streamed by Chrome OS users to their Chromecast
• It’s being reported that Android One devices will require an SD card for saving media on-device. Not surprising given price points and relatively small on board non-volatile storage, and also something shared with FxOS phones in that segment.
• Google will be offering offline viewing of YouTube content for Android One owners in India. Technical details aren’t currently available, but given India’s slow mobile data and use of WiFi for downloading media for consumption later, this makes a lot of sense, and also provides additional value/competitive differentiation to users on a platform Google effectively controls.
• Mojang confirms it’s being purchased by Microsoft for $2.5B. Great move by MS, with many, many people playing on mobile platforms, giving access to a younger (and completely different) demographic. Worth noting Notch’s departure note from Mojang as well, which just feels… kind of sad.

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
• AirMozilla: for broadcast and saved recordings

Schedule & Progress onUpcoming Releases (Lukas/Sylvestre/Lawrence)

• Chemspills 
  • Firefox for Android 32.0.1 built yesterday, may ship as early as today
    • bug 1046017 Taps are offset on some devices
    • Ride along: bug 1063971 setRemoteDescription call without success-callback freezes PeerConnection queue (FF32 regression)
  • Firefox Desktop 32.0.1, candidate bugs
    • bug 1062452 Firefox 32.0 crashes frequently in aticfx32.dll with switchable Intel+ATI graphics
    • bug 1063048 Firefox 32 startup crash in _VEC_memzero | _VEC_memzero
    • bug 1063052 Firefox 32 startup crash in nsFrame::BoxReflow
    • Ride along: bug 1046645 Mixed content favicon is shown when loading a SSL site right after opening a new tab
    • Ride along: bug 1063971 setRemoteDescription call without success-callback freezes PeerConnection queue (FF32 regression)

• Beta
  • 33.0 beta2 shipped yesterday
    • Enabled second screen sharing (aka chromecast), which was disabled in beta1
  • Desktop beta3 gtb Thursday
  • Desktop and mobile beta4 gtb Monday
    • Last 33 beta release that will have loop enabled

Firefox Desktop & Platform (Javaun/Chad/Martin)

Summary of Work In Progress

• You can find the most recently completed iteration (34.3) performance report here
• You can see the status of the current iteration (35.1) in progress here

Uplifts

Beta (33)

• New error page is poor color contrast. ( Bug 1009812 )
• Intermittent ERROR: AsyncShutdown timeout in profile-before-change Conditions: [{“name”:”Experiments.jsm shutdown”,”state”:”(none)”,”filename”:”resource://app/modules/experiments/Experiments.jsm”,”lineNumber”:408},… ( Bug 1012924 )
• about:networking hostname list not clearing after deleting history ( Bug 1020539 )
• New error pages are unable to be styled by 3rd party complete themes ( Bug 1035536 )

Aurora (34)

• Implementation: Use something other than a modal dialog to ask for setting the default browser ( Bug 951627 )
• Support RTL mode in the panel ( Bug 1050309 )
• Use HiDPI ICO favicons throughout the UI ( Bug 1052174 )
• Fix typos and improve some of the Loop text ( Bug 1058258 )
• 5.68% tart windows regression on fx team (v.34) August 15 from bug 862563 ( Bug 1060460 )

Summary of Recent Landings

• Team landed 31 bugs over the last week, for the first half of the 35.1 iteration.
• Details of landings from the past week can be seen here

Firefox Mobile (Mark/Brad/Jenn)

Work In Progress

• Browser toolbar refresh bug 1058909
• WebRTC OpenGL on Roku – fixing and tweaking
• Moz Stumbler currently off due to start time regression bug 1064677
• Janus https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/Janus
  • investigating performance issues
  • looking into <picture> element injection
  • Adding TCP/socket stats

You can find more on upcoming feature plans in the[roadmap]

Uplifts from the past week

Release(32)

• Taps are offset on some devices ( Bug 1046017 )

Beta (33)

• Add UI telemetry for managing search engines ( Bug 1007523 )
• Taps are offset on some devices ( Bug 1046017 )
• Browser menu missing dividers in Android L Preview ( Bug 1050780 )
• Setting to clear data on quit doesn’t clear tabs from last time panel ( Bug 1052387 )
• Notify Gecko when browser history is cleared from HistoryPanel ( Bug 1060678 )
• Casting video is disabled on Beta ( Bug 1063893 )

Aurora (34)

• Change ‘Cast to’ term to ‘Send to ‘ in-product ( Bug 1054912 )
• java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: android.net.ConnectivityManager.isActiveNetworkMetered ( Bug 1057626 )
• crash in java.lang.IllegalStateException: Already registered Wifi:Enable at org.mozilla.gecko.EventDispatcher.registerListener(EventDispatcher.java) ( Bug 1061030 )

Landings from the past week

Nightly (35)

• Remove gradients from form elements ( Bug 763671 )
• Create a synced tabs panel (Bug 1014994)
• Regression: Browser menu has width issues ( Bug 1020505 )
• Not obvious that browser menu is scrollable on small screen devices ( Bug 1048300 )
• Crash on stop attempt after display wake up – java.lang.NullPointerException @ org.mozilla.gecko.ChromeCast.end(ChromeCast.java:254) ( Bug 1055020 )
• [Roku] tapping the back button on Android doesn’t dismiss the ‘cast to device’ dialogue ( Bug 1055484 )
• Too many differing background greys throughout the browser ( Bug 1055536 )
• crash NPE in: Attempt to invoke interface method void org.mozilla.gecko.util.EventCallback.sendSuccess(java.lang.Object) on a null object reference at org.mozilla.gecko.ChromeCast$VideoPlayCallback.onStatusUpdated(ChromeCast.java) ( Bug 1055553 )
• crash in java.lang.NullPointerException: at org.mozilla.gecko.ChromeCast$VideoPlayCallback.onStatusUpdated(ChromeCast.java) ( Bug 1055554 )
• Kindle: No way to remove Firefox account ( Bug 1056707 )
• WEBGL_draw_buffers extension incorrectly exposed in Firefox on some GLES3 devices ( Bug 1056947 )
• Telemetry for search widget buttons ( Bug 1057613 )
• Cut function in a readonly textarea ( Bug 1060423 )
• crash in java.lang.NullPointerException: at org.mozilla.gecko.overlays.ui.ShareDialog.slideOut(ShareDialog.java) ( Bug 1061685 )
• Autophone – webappstartup test does not run ( Bug 1062097 )
• Menu share icon is misaligned to the right ( Bug 1062231 )
• Regression: No context menu action is invoked on long-tapping some links ( Bug 1062307 )
• Use empty string as title if no title provided when adding a bookmark ( 1062552 Bug 1062552 )

Market Insights from the Market Strategy Team (Kev)

Something to think About

There’s been some talk about how HTTPS by default would help mitigate things like Comcast’s Open Wifi hotspots helpfully performing content injection of ads into people’s browsing session(s) and other deep-packet inspection by various parties. This type of activity has the potential to become another war of attrition between browser orgs and adware/malware providers, and brings the certificate store into the spotlight. The certificate store, and continuing to validate its content, is something we should probably pay more attention to as more and more content is delivered via HTTPS as a default.
Why we should care: Trust is important, and so is encrypting traffic end-to-end. As more of that traffic is encrypted, the cert store can become a target for malware. We need to ensure that as we push HTTPS, we also keep an eye on the pieces that make it work.

Things we’re working on

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/Janus

Pinning on tiles.services.mozilla.com

bug 1030135

Worth a Read

• In addition to the addition of NFC to the iPhone 6, Apple also introduced its Pay system to make NFC transactions more appealing to retailers and payment providers. Just incorporating NFC hasn’t been enough to get mobile payments off the ground in the US, and Apple’s partnering with banks, credit companies, and payment providers may give it the boost it needs. developer site here.
• Oracle will only certify Firefox ESR for use with its E-Business Suite, citing Firefox’s 6-week release as a pain point. Chrome is still not officially certified. Good opportunity to make a little noise around ESR in the corporate environment.

Notes

• Unsurprisingly, the paid peering deals Netflix signed with US ISPs are having an effect on Netflix speed ratings
• Microsoft is apparently close to acquiring Mojang and Minecraft. This is a pretty shrewd move by MS, targeting a community of builders, as well as a younger generation of gamers and content consumers.
• Google Voice is merging with Hangouts
• Apple released its iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus with considerable expansions in screen size and storage. They also released the Apple Watch, their entry into the wearable category. Of note also is the removal of the iPod Classic, which could mean a 128GB touch will follow shortly (or, as GigaOM suggests, heavier promotion of the Beats streaming service)
• Amazon’s Fire phone has finished it’s demand run, and has been reduced to from $199 to 99 cents on contract.
• Netflix has improved its Chromecast support, implying that its seeing more usage there. My daughter approves.
• Samsung had something to say about Apple releasing a phablet (if you didn’t know, phablets are one of the stronger growth areas on mobile, and have been linked to decreased demand for tablets, too)
• Google now allows the installation of free apps without being signed in to an account.

Marketing, Press & Public Reaction (Arcadio)

• Non-Verbal Update

• Firefox 32 Press as of Sept 4 (Android and Desktop)

1. Europe: 90+ stories
2. LATAM: 14+ Stories
3. US: 18+ stories including a nice piece on WebRTC (Hello) and Roku/Chromecast support on Android on Techcrunch

• Accounts snippet support in progress

1. Numbered list item

• Sync landing page revision currently on demo server ready for QA

1. Sync landing page launch pushed to w/o 9/15

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
• AirMozilla: for broadcast and saved recordings