Firefox2/Requirements

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Please do not edit these pages without permission of the Bon Echo steering group. Your feedback and comments are welcomed on the discussion page.

Requirements

Overview

This document sets out the feature set, product requirements and prioritization for the development and release of Firefox 2, code-named "Bon Echo", presently under development with an expected release in Q3 2006.

The intended audience for this document is the community involved in designing, developing, testing and managing the release of the product as well as partners and third-party developers who are building software that extends Bon Echo.

All press inquiries should be directed to the Mozilla Press Centre.

Priorities

Priority Description
P1 Mandatory - The set of features required as a minimum for this release to be complete. The product will not ship without these.
P2 Highly Desirable - A key feature that will make the product more complete, has great benefits to the end-user and major strategic impact.
P3 Nice to Have - Lowest priority feature that may be incorporated, dropping first in favour of delivering P2 items.
P4 Future - Intended for future release, included as they may influence design decisions and should be associated with the roadmap.
D Deleted - Requirements that have been deleted from the product roadmap.
Px Tentative - Requirements that are proposed but have not yet been approved

Milestones

Milestone Description
A1 2.0a1 - Bon Echo Alpha 1
A2 2.0a2 - Bon Echo Alpha 2
B1 2.0b1 - Bon Echo Beta 1
B2 2.0b2 - Bon Echo Beta 2

Note: Milestone targets are included in this document for initial planning purposes, authoratative landing targets will continue to be held per individual bug, and the latest tracking status for each feature area will be listed in the most recent status meeting minutes.

Feature Areas

Visual Refresh

Bon Echo will update its appearance to look and feel like a modern native application on all platforms. Incremental polish and refinement to the user interface will focus on improving the usability and accessibility of primary product features.

Chrome Polishing
Priority Milestone Item
P1 A2 review and simplification of existing top level chrome
P3 B1 use of consistent terminology and layout in dialogs
P3 B1 elimination of unneccessary dialogs & UI
Theme Polishing
Priority Milestone Item
P1 A2 new icons for new features
P1 B1 new icons for all themes
P1 A2 NSITheme support for Windows Vista API
P1 B1 polish winstripe based on Windows Vista
P2 B1 polish pinstripe based on OS X 10.4
P3 B1 polish gnomestripe based on Gnome

Bookmarks and History

Bon Echo will modernize its data model to extend capabilities around synchronizing, storing and retrieving bookmark and history data and meta data. The existing bookmarks UI will be preserved, but augmented to facilitate ease of management, searching, and indexing of web browsing history and sites of interest.

note: as announced in mozilla.dev.planning, the bookmark and history rewrite has been deprioritized and is no longer targeted at the Bon Echo release.

Places
Priority Milestone Item
P4 Fx3 new data storage layer using SQLlite with no impact to performance (startup, page load, new window times)
P4 Fx3 parity with Firefox 1.x bookmark access points in toolbars and menus
P4 Fx3 parity with existing management methods using drag and drop, clipboard, property editing, etc.
P4 Fx3 easy method for end-users to add bookmarks through main browser UI
P4 Fx3 ability to import existing bookmarks and history from existing Firefox profiles
P4 Fx3 developer API to access bookmarks and allow services to act as bookmark sources
P4 Fx3 fast & easy search through bookmarks and history in main browser UI
P4 Fx3 advanced management and search capabilities for history and bookmarks
P4 Fx3 ability to import existing bookmarks and history from Mozilla
P4 Fx3 export bookmarks to standard format that can be imported by IE, Opera, Fx1.x
P4 Fx3 support for rendering a bookmark as a microsummary (from definition provided in page content or as defined in an extension)
P4 Fx3 live bookmarks aggregation through "subscriptions" folder
P4 Fx3 optional ability to annotate bookmarks and history with tags, notes, arbitrary metadata
P4 Fx3 mechanism to allow users to generate microsummary definitions

User Experience

Bon Echo will improve on the web browsing experience with enhancements to tabs, and the ability to restart the browser without losing state. It will also address many frequently raised usability issues to streamline the overall user experience.

General UI
Priority Milestone Item
P1 A1 fixes for HTML target="" bugs for tabbed browsing
P1 B1 improved UI for handling tab overflow
P1 B1 set default destination for new window links is new tabs
P1 A1 improved discoverability and usability of close tab button
P1 A1 heuristic for tab close selection behaviour to match user expectations
P1 B1 conduct and incorporate feedback from usabilty study on close tab buttons
P2 A2 add UI for re-opening accidentally closed tabs
P2 A2 add UI for managing multiple tabs (preview, switching, etc)
P2 A2 support for multiple infobars (.showMessage calls) on a tab/page
P3 A2 indication in primary UI of content detected in page (media, microformats, semantic content, etc)
P3 A2 ability to reset all preferences / profile options including default bookmarks and search engines
P4 B1 add visual animation enhancements for tab re-ordering, preview, etc
P4 B1 add ability to tear off tabs
Session Restore
Priority Milestone Item
P1 A2 restore session after an application forced restart
P2 A2 restore session after a crash (that avoids a crash-restart-crash loop)
P2 B1 API allowing extensions to contribute items to be saved/restored across sessions
P3 A2 option to allow advanced users to always restore session after normal shutdown
Spell Check
Priority Milestone Item
P2 A2 spell-as-you-type functionality for text fields
P2 A2 identify and meet license requirements to bundle english dictionary
P2 B1 identify and meet license requirements to provide secondary distribution of l10n dictionaries
P3 B1 identify and meet license requirements to bundle l10n dictionaries

Feeds

Bon Echo will make it easier for users to discover, preview and interact with web feeds. It will allow users to selectively view feeds with either Live Bookmarks, web applications, Extensions or standalone applications.

Feed Handling and Parsing
Priority Milestone Item
P1 A2 content sniffing to detect when content served as XML or text is actually a feed
P1 A2 consistent user experience for previewing, handling & subscribing to feeds
P2 A2 ability to subscribe to feeds using client app or web service
P2 B1 developer APIs to access to feed content in format-agnostic fashion and feed parser
P3 B1 content-area preview of XML-RSS/XML-Atom content
User Interface Requirements
Priority Milestone Item
P2 A2 low-bar pretty-printing for RSS/Atom that displays content (images, sound files, movie files, text) in a human-readable format

Extensions

Bon Echo will make it easier for users to add, remove, and configure Extensions. It will also provide a mechanism to protect users from potentially malicious or dangerous third-party Extensions.

User Interface Requirements
Priority Milestone Item
P2 A2 improve extension management experience to simplify tasks of adding, removing, updating, disabling and configuring extensions
P2 A2 primary UI indication of when extension updates are available
P2 A2 better detection of extension updates during automatic application updates
P2 A2 simplify extension installation and update dialogs
D A2 password lockdown for extension installation
Extension Blocklisting
Priority Milestone Item
P1 A1 capability to enable, disable, and block installation of extensions based on a blocklist
P1 A1 mozilla.com server-side resources for hosting the blocklist
P1 B1 policy and criteria for disabling and re-enabling extensions
Locale Packs
Priority Milestone Item
P1 A2 support for extensions that provide l10n to applications or extensions

Search

Bon Echo will modernize the search plugin specification to provide enhanced compatibility and extensibility. It will also make it easier for users to manage their search plugins.

User Interface Requirements
Priority Milestone Item
P1 A2 UI for managing search plugins
P2 A2 ability to restoring default search plugins
P2 A2 improve discoverability of search chrome
P2 A2 resizable search box and reordering search plugins
P3 A2 support for multiple search boxes
P3 A2 combine bookmark keywords and bookmark search
Searchplugins
Priority Milestone Item
P1 A1 new XML based data model for search plugins
P2 A1 import for Sherlock format
P2 A1 import for subset of Open Search format
P2 A2 API for type-ahead find search results
P2 A2 API for adding search engines, including JS methods
P2 A2 discovery of searchplugins using the <link rel> tag
P3 a2 auto-discovery of search plugins

Distribution Support

Bon Echo will include new and enhanced capabilities that will facilitate customization, installation and life cycle support for multiple distribution channels.

Installer
Priority Milestone Item
P2 A2 move to NSIS installer
P3 A2 have installer only fetch app-extensions for advanced options when selected during install
EULA
Priority Milestone Item
P1 A2 must display EULA on install or on first run when install was silent or when browser was pre-loaded
Distribution Channel Support
Priority Milestone Item
P1 A2 mechanism for building custom branded or themed builds for partner distributions
P1 A2 enhancements to software update infrastructre to support N distributions
P4 B1 MSI distribution

Infrastructure & Performance

Bon Echo will be optimized and tuned for general web browsing use cases.

Performance
Priority Milestone Item
P1 B1 improve memory usage
P2 B1 no unplanned regressions in web compatibility
P2 B1 no regressions in browsing speed / page load times
Gecko 1.9 Platform Uplift
Priority Milestone Item
P1 B1 security patches from gecko 1.9
P2 B1 other small, safe, but important gecko 1.9 patches (tbd by schrep, brendan and shaver)
Instrumentation
Priority Milestone Item
P2 A2 open and documented data structure for browser performance instrumentation
P2 A2 UI to enable/disable instrumentation
P2 A2 server-side infrastructure to collect data from instrumented builds
P3 A2 API and hooks to collect metrics from extensions

Security

Bon Echo will act as a trusted friend, facilitating as safe and secure browsing experience as possible.

Phishing Protection
Priority Milestone Item
P1 A2 in-browser phishing protection that provides warnings
P1 A2 bundling or installation wizard to integrate enhanced phishing protection
P2 A2 API for phishing protection extensions to use in order to provide consistent and best possible user experience
SSL
Priority Milestone Item
P1 A1 remove SSL2 and weak ciphersuites
P3 A2 enable ECC (requires NSS 3.11 snapshot)
P3 A2 improve UI for SSL/security information

Documentation

End-User Documentation
Priority Milestone Item
P3 A2 reduce in-product help content to minimum amount required, moving remainder to web-accessible location
P3 A2 replace existing help UI with rich UI that brings user to online help
P4 -- enhance online help system to be community edited, collect metrics and feedback from users

Platform Support

Platform Support
Priority Milestone Item
P1 -- Windows Vista
P1 -- Windows XP
P1 -- Windows 2000
P1 -- Windows ME
P1 -- Mac OS X 10.2+ (Universal Binary)
P1 -- Red Hat Linux
P2 -- All other Linux variants

Locale Support

Priority Milestone Item
Tier 1
P1 -- English (en-US)
P1 -- English (en-GB)
P1 -- French (fr)
P1 -- German (de)
P1 -- Japanese (ja)
P1 -- Polish (pl)
P1 -- Spanish (es-ES)
Tier 2
P1 -- Chinese (zh-CN)
P1 -- Chinese (zh-TW)
P1 -- Czech (cs)
P1 -- Danish (da)
P1 -- Dutch (nl)
P1 -- Finnish (fi)
P1 -- Hungarian (hu)
P1 -- Italian (it)
P1 -- Korean (ko)
P1 -- Portuguese (pt-BR)
P1 -- Russian (ru)
P1 -- Spanish (es-AR)
P1 -- Swedish (sv-SE)
P1 -- Turkish (tr)
Tier 3
P2 -- Catalan (ca)
P2 -- [need to add any highly desirable but would not hold initial release for]