Firefox/Meeting/27-Sep-2016

Actions from last meeting

General Topics / Roundtable

(tips/tricks/FYI, productivity improvements, industry news)

• volunteer list for running the meeting
• [mikedeboer]
• [mconley] In order to improve integration, I've added a Context Graph section and extended an invitation to ckarlof's team to this meeting.
• (They're in a work week this week, so I'll be reading some bullets from them)
• [mconley] https://blog.nightly.mozilla.org/2016/09/22/these-weeks-in-firefox-1/
• Want to help out johannh and myself? It's easy! Add links to stuff (bugs, wiki pages, etc), and make sure to give folks credit where it's due.
• Also, if you have 10 minutes after the meeting, it'd be lovely if some of us could jockey and figure out what the "headlines" should be.
• [jaws] hg.mozilla.org certificate change: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1147548#c12
• [jaws] Firefox Telemetry survey, please fill out: https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/firefox-dev/2016-September/004588.html
• [mconley] Discussion about Cu.import / require / modules: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.platform/JhmCjt3fnP0
• Yoric opened https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1305669
• [MattN] The Taipei Development Center will be adding their project updates from now on
• [jaws] Firefox Self-Repair renamed to SHIELD is being converted to a system add-on https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/firefox-dev/2016-September/004594.html
• [florian] The browser_parsable_css.js test now checks missing references to image files (Bug 1302570) and will soon check toolkit files too (bug 1221383)

Friends of the Firefox team

(Give a shoutout/thanks to people for helping fix and test bugs. Introductions)

• Resolved bugs (excluding employees): https://mzl.la/2cyGIMB
• More than one bug fixed:
• Tomislav Jovanovic :zombie
• Tooru Fujisawa [:arai]
• New Contributors
• Filipe removed Cortana support from Firefox in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1287622
• adamg2 helped clean up part of the Telemetry API in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1299144
• kxnikx helped to make some of our CSS variables more clear in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1302950
• Amal Santosh helped to fix an error in the CSS for about:networking in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1303356

Project Updates

Add-ons

Context Graph

• Goals for 2016
• Activity Stream (first Context Graph product experience):
• Ongoing work as Test Pilot experiment
• Performing SHIELD study against original about:newtab for validation
• Aiming to be in nightly as system addon by Q1 2017
• Hoping to ship in Android and iOS as well, but the time frame might be slightly different
• Consistent Sync Experience:
• Review Sync services state and propose incremental improvements
• Device registration and push support
• Refine FF for iOS bi-directional sync  
• Validate consistent sync experience across desktop and mobile
• New Mobile Experience:
• Identify key problem areas to pursue
• Prototypes
• MVP definition and market/competitive analysis
• Validating with users at each step
• More details about new mobile experience initiative https://wiki.mozilla.org/New_Mobile_Experience 
• For on-going projects and team updates: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Context_Graph#Projects 

=== E10s === 

• With Firefox 49 out the door, e10s is now enabled to users on the release channel by default if they have no add-ons, or only these add-ons:
• https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zE1TNV0z6gaYgugBAns3XXDexLDHAa2Dmj0EVQIg8tc/edit#gid=0
• e10s has been temporarily disabled for users with a ru-* locale due to https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1294719
• Bug to re-enable: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1304874
• Bug 1300411 - user reports excessive load spinning when switching tabs with e10s in 48.0.2 release (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1300411)
• Still analyzing Telemetry data to get a sense of how many users are seeing this
• https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1301131 has been filed to disable e10s for users on release that see the spinner too much
• https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1303077 has been filed to gather stacks from the content process when the spinner is shown for a long time
• billm got https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1279086 in before the uplift, which allows us to interrupt JS to paint, which is helping.
• Many tab-switch timing Telemetry probes have been made opt-out (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1304113)
• Bug 1241459 - [e10s] A crashed background tab does not give option to submit (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1241459)
• A plan for dealing with crashed background tabs has been figured out with phlsa: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1241459#c15

Firefox Core Engineering

• Aggregation of content process Telemetry in the main process (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1218576) has landed
• and spawned: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1304009, https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1304660, and https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1304519
• Symbolication server (symbolapi.mozilla.org) rewrite will need testers, feel free to add your name here: 
• mconley
• Ongoing work:
• looking into cause of orphaning (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1284915)
• researching uptake of FF44 orphan remediation (via system add-on) (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1293368)
• Flash blocking & UI test definition (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1277346, but bug tree to be revised)
• creation of content process crash ping, crash ping-based dataset, and non-Gecko method of sending crash pings as soon as possible (starting to capture startup crashes)

Form Autofill

• System add-on stub landed in bug 1303469
• No longer plan to use a bootstrap.js/WebExt hybrid because the only thing we were hoping to use WebExtensions for isn't supported: bug 1304021
• Kickoff workweek was last week
• Summary post on our new mailing list: https://groups.google.com/d/topic/mozilla.autofill/B9mNjxTyzlQ/discussion
• UX spec was revised
• Discussed success metrics
• LukeChang is working on profile storage
• SChung is working on gathering info from forms to send to the parent and being able to fill the form with profile data
• MattN is figuring out the integration with autocomplete and preferences

Go Faster

• FF 49 simplified the releasing process, we no longer have to re-publish identical version of all add-ons already in FF when releasing just one updated add-on.
• Work continues towards simplifying the out-of-cycle shipping process
• Working on clarifying long term bootstrap / WebExtension / Hybrid plans for system add-ons

Platform UI and other Platform Audibles

• [timdream/scottwu] Date/time input (meta bug 888320)
• First patch (bug 1283384) is being work on based on the feedback.
• Visual design to be finalized (bug 1069609)
• [mconley] daleharvey has added fallback URLs for the GMP downloader if AUS goes down at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1267495
• [mconley] A patch to switch the autocomplete popup from a <xul:tree> to a <xul:richlistbox> is ready for review: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1296638
• Keeping an eye on the work going on with Form Autofill to make sure we integrate properly
• [mconley] Will start working on Contextual Feedback on Insecure Passwords shortly (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1217162)
• [mconley] Added a new API for system add-ons to prompt the user for permissions in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1297475
• See PermissionUI.jsm for documentation
• [jaws] select dropdowns are moving forward.
• new designs are being implemented now, should have a first pass at new styling implemented by friday.
• e10s/non-e10s code merging is in progress
• search within select dropdowns being implemented too
• Expect a leap forward after this weekend, as we're having a hack weekend in Michigan

Privacy/Security

• Prepared demo builds of control center v2 and with the redesigned permission panels with/without 'X' for user testing, and to demo to Product
• Working on a new "Temporary Blocked" permission state (Bug 1206232) to prevent permission spamming
• This means that the default "Allow" and "Block" buttons on permission notifications will remember the choice for tab lifetime (or until the user navigates away)
• (Except for WebRTC prompts that will only remember 'Block')
• The screen sharing permission prompt will soon show previews (bug 1284877)

Quality of Experience

• Many improvements to the experience in high-contrast mode on Windows
• Running automatic data migration from other browsers experiment on beta to get telemetry information on how to proceed
• Also going to be running as part of an onboarding funnelcake against 49 release
• Improvements to the performance/smoothness of arrow panels and specifically the 'main' menu panel
• Students being mentored to work on improving the styling/functionality of <select> dropdowns.
• Work has started on fixing some issues with "Reader Mode" in Firefox
• "Modal" find highlight is turned on again and many performance improvements have landed. Work is ongoing to improve perf and functionality (hint: scrollbar indicators!) further
• Deeper investigations in to possible new theming API. Meeting with Product, Add-ons, and UX teams. No API yet, still figuring out what it would allow.

Search

• Still fixing awesomebar regressions and improving responsiveness
• Will likely retire the Universal Search Test Pilot experiment to focus on things we can do with Cliqz

Sync/FxA

• Connecting to non-production servers (like stage or custom sync/fxa servers) should only take one preference instead of nine https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1249520
• Work on syncing search plugins beginning https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=444284
• Bookmark validation info should be reported in sync ping for a small number of nightly users https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1267917
• Sync ping almost integrated with rest of telemetry data pipeline https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1298763
• Progress on a number of bookmark sync quality bugs (many of which are aimed at allowing bidirectional bookmark sync on iOS)

= Video control visual update

• [timdream/Ray Lin] (bug 1271765) Front-end patch complete and blocked on a layout patch: need to fix nsVideoFrame::GetVideoIntrinsicSize so it could understand HTML layout too.
• [timdream/Ray Lin] Future plans includes adding integration tests on the UI, convert android video control also to HTML, and split the shared desktop/fennec binding. See https://github.com/gaia-taipei/gaia-weekly/blob/master/RayLin.md#video-control-planning

Storage Management

• The meta bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1254428
• The API standard: https://storage.spec.whatwg.org/
• The platform DOM team is implementing related APIs
• The ongoing UX proposal: https://mozilla.invisionapp.com/share/4Y87EJO39#/screens/179635747_1-0_Cove
• Plan to merge  the 'offline web content' section with the new 'site data'
• Bug 1286717 -  Expose persist() method to StorageManager
• Now can test persistent storage permission prompt with the test patches

Content Handling Enhancement

Dialog Removal (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1270418 )

• UX designer and code reviewer Paolo seem to reach agreement. Paolo will file relevant meta-bugs with more details by early this week.
• +1 !

Download Panel

• Solving 6 summary section bugs reported by SoftVision
• Resolved INVALID 4 bugs
• 1302070 - Windows 7 (Aero) Theme - Open Downloads Folder button contains separator and is not properly highlighted
• 1303032 - On arabic build "Open Downloads Folder" case is bigger than Download Panel 
• 1303289 - Download Panel color doesn't change if you download malicious or uncommon files
• 1303007 - Dropmarker options are not translated
• Checking remaining 2 bugs
• 1301658  - High Contrast Theme - both options are highlighted in the downloads dropmarker
• 1301708 - Inconsistent number of clicks when dismissing the downloads panel + dropmarker
• [seanlee] popupshowing and popupshown events are triggered twice at second click on dropmarker in Windows platform.
• [seanlee / Rex Lee] New design of Main Menu (working on these)
• 950058 - Split each download item so that all of the right part of it activates the action 
• 1289139 - Use SVG for the button icons in the Downloads Panel
• 1282664 - Redesign the right-click menu for each item in downloads panel

Protocol Handler Registration Flow (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1270416 )

• Discussing UX spec with Gijs and Paolo

For detailed progress please refer to 9/26 project meeting minutes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aWZ1Qo9GaujQMO0yRWofveRDJhJQoIVUuRq5p823svE/edit#heading=h.udhoplnf4epp

This week I learned

• [mconley] --artifact builds on try for Linux64&#55357;&#56879;
• [MattN] XPCOMUtils.defineLazyPreferenceGetter
• [mconley] UIforETW: https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2015/04/14/uiforetw-windows-performance-made-easier/
• [seanlee]
• https://github.com/fx-dev-playground/gecko-workflow-instruction
• https://github.com/fx-dev-playground/gecko