Firefox/Planning/2014-01-15

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

Actions from Last Week

Schedule & Progress on Upcoming Releases

Firefox Desktop & Platform

Current Releases

Beta (126)

[Read Only, at workweek]

• Fx27.0b6 for desktop and mobile have been shipped
• Fx27.0b7 for desktop will GTB tomorrow
• Although a Federal Holiday on Jan 20 in the US, we are going to maintain our Fx 27 Beta 8 go-to-build on Monday as scheduled.

Aurora (54)

Nightly (127)

Firefox Metro

Firefox Mobile

Current Releases

Beta (126)

• Crashes are less then 3 per 100 adu, so it's below our threshold but we'd still like to see this trend to continue to go down, here's some of the latest stability wins uplifted to beta:
  • bug 945327 - crash in libc.so@0x22048 / libc.so@0x21f90 - Android 4.4 Nexus devices - Downloading files
  • bug 930735 - crash in js::CloneFunctionObject(JSContext*, JS::Handle<JSFunction*>, JS::Handle<JSObject*>, js::gc::AllocKind, js::NewObjectKind)
  • bug 935831 - segfault on Android 2.3 [@ memcpy | libfreebl3.so (deleted)@0x7549] [next week's Beta]
• Otherwise, no changes to the plan of record: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/Roadmap#Firefox_27:_.28Beta.29

Aurora (54)

• Belarusian is out for Fx28 bug 521981
• Continued focus on converging action bar for text selection: bug 768667

Nightly (127)

• Spinning up an effort to keep firefox lighter bug 942609, and faster bug 959776, bug 947390

Developer Tools

• Jetpack
  • SDK docs migrated to MDN!
  • toolbar api is landed, add-on debugger landing soon
  • native jetpack/npm support in progress to support devtools SDK
• Devtools
  • the hilighter tool is now global and will look much nicer really soon
  • it's a new year, work has begin on new page profiling and memory heap analysis tools
  • libADB is coming along nicely, will enable more reliable device connection from the app manager (bug) (github repo)

Feedback Summary

Desktop

• All of us are at a workweek this week. But we're still working (ironic, I know). We'll have an Australis report for you by the end of the week. [Note: we're also learning a lot about how to build buzz and make teasers from the PR team.]

Mobile

UX & User Research

Market Insights from the Market Strategy Team

Desktop / Platform

• A federal appeals court in Washington struck down the FCC's rules for Net neutrality while upholding the FCC's right to regulate broadband access [1] which has numerous repercussions.[2]

• According to Net Applications, in December Windows 8/8.1 gained 1.19% of desktop OS market share to go to 10.49% of total desktop. [3] Windows overall lost 0.15% along with OS X which lost 0.02%, while Linux gained 0.17%, a trend visible through 2013 and attributable to adoption of Steam [4] and OpenStack [5] on Linux. Meanwhile IE11 gained 7.15% market share of unique users on desktop, stealing share from IE10 and IE9 (XP users cannot upgrade beyond IE8). Likewise Chrome 31 gained 6.11%, mostly from Chrome 30. [6]

• To reduce the impact of add-ons/extensions slowing down browser performance [7], Google updated its Chrome Web Store policy for extensions [8] requiring that all extensions have a single purpose that is narrow and easy-to-understand. [9]

• Chrome 32.0.1700.76 can now track down noisy tabs [10] along with bringing the Chrome OS desktop [11], malware protection [12] and supervised users. [13]

• Reducing conditional GET requests with Intelligent Browser Referencing [14], HTTP Client Hints can be used as input to proactive content negotiation [15] and smart rendering of content [16] for simplicity [17] are options being evaluated to improve browsing experience.

• Facebook is starting tests of video advertisements in “News Feed” [18] although a survey by Analytic Partners in November found that 83% of users consider video ads “intrusive” and would likely “ignore” them. [19]

• Opera launched Reference Design Kit (RDK), a software bundle with a common framework powering IP or hybrid set-top boxes and gateway devices to work on Chromium/Blink.[20] Worldwide shipments of connectable STBs are forecast to rise to 125.6 million units in 2017 45% of total STBs in 2017, up from 65.8 million in 2012 which is 26% of total STBs in 2012, [21]

• LG plans to launch an all-in-on Chromebase desktop computer utilizing Google’s Gmail, Drive, Search, Maps, YouTube, Play and Google+ Hangouts. [22] Samsung is also offering the Chromebox desktop computer running the Chrome OS. [23]

Marketing, Press & Public Reaction

Questions, Comments, FYI

• Removing a few localizations that haven't been up-to-date for a while, see post to release-drivers and bug 958703

Actions this week