Firefox/Meeting/25-Oct-2016

Details

• Every two weeks - 8:00am Pacific, 11:00am Eastern, 16:00 UTC
• Handy local meeting time link

• Dial-in: Audio-only conference# 91337
  • People with Mozilla phones or softphones please dial x4000 Conf# 91337
  • US/Toll-free: +1 800 707 2533, (pin 4000) Conf# 91337
  • US/California/Mountain View: +1 650 903 0800, x4000 Conf# 91337
  • US/California/San Francisco: +1 415 762 5700, x4000 Conf# 91337
  • US/Oregon/Portland: +1 971 544 8000, x4000 Conf# 91337
  • CA/British Columbia/Vancouver: +1 778 785 1540, x4000 Conf# 91337
  • CA/Ontario/Toronto: +1 416 848 3114, x4000 Conf# 91337
  • UK/London: +44 (0)207 855 3000, x4000 Conf# 91337
  • FR/Paris: +33 1 84 88 37 37, x4000 Conf# 91337
  • Gmail Chat (requires Flash and the Google Talk plugin): paste +1 650 903 0800 into the Gmail Chat box that doesn't look like it accepts phone numbers
  • SkypeOut is free if you use the 800 number
• irc.mozilla.org #fx-team for backchannel
• "Firefox" Vidyo Room

General Topics / Roundtable

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

• Tomorrow: Firefox All Hands Team Meeting, hosted by Mark. Please attend!
• Firefox 52 ESR will be the last version to support Window XP and Vista
  • https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.platform/W6pUpP_FbZY/D6aHsjN_BAAJ
• Selection events shipping in Fx 52!
  • https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.platform/mziFttqlkDM
• Call for action: Help ridding tests of unsafe CPOWs
  • https://groups.google.com/d/msg/firefox-dev/l3esiJfIFNE/bx0OpTzvEQAJ
• High Contrast mode improvements and how you can help
  • https://groups.google.com/d/msg/firefox-dev/JereBDdTtpM/UvcSloIBEAAJ
• Update on L20n in Firefox
  • Hitting performance snags when touching XUL nodes dynamically using JS
    • Talk to https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Technical_Architecture_Group
  • Needs someone to debug a test failure of one specific unit test
    • https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1292128
  • Test it out on https://hg.mozilla.org/projects/larch/
• [mconley] Note that new contributors are unlikely to know which flags to set. Monitor your mentored bugs carefully!
  • https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/userprefs.cgi?tab=settings <-- get X-Bugzilla headers put into the email body, and then you can search / label / filter in GMail
  • https://wiki.mozilla.org/BMO/UserGuide/Filtering_Bugzilla_Email_in_GMail <-- X-Bugzilla headers for great success
  • If you're using Thunderbird, you can add a Message Filter for the X-Bugzilla-Mentors header when it contains your Bugzilla email address, and set a label.
• [RyanVM] Shout-out for some nice design docs from the Taipei team, making test plans much easier to write
  • Download Panel overhaul
    • https://bug1269956.bmoattachments.org/attachment.cgi?id=8791134
    • https://bug1269956.bmoattachments.org/attachment.cgi?id=8800042
  • Decoder Shutdown and Block Playback feature
    • https://mozilla.invisionapp.com/share/K48PCVSEM#/screens/190734092
• [Standard8] More eslint work is ongoing to enable more rules & coverage. jaws/Mossop/Standard8 are main co-ordinators.
  • Mentored bugs for enabling more directories: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/showdependencytree.cgi?id=1311338&hide_resolved=1
  • no-undef https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1311312
  • no-unused-vars https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1312277
• [mikedeboer] is today's host, who will it be next week?

Friends of the Firefox team

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

• Resolved bugs (excluding employees): http://mzl.la/1MIprek
  • More than one bug fixed:
    • Tomislav Jovanovic :zombie
  • New Contributors
    • David Malaschonok ( https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=926579 )
    • William CS ( https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1295000 )
    • Sumit Tiwari ( https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1309249 )

Project Updates

Add-ons

• Intending to implement WebExtensions permissions https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1308292
  • Working with Panos team on the elm branch which will be required for this
  • Aiming for 53
• Change to SDK to dramatically increase performance, currently being discussed if we should uplift to 50
  • https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1308332
  • https://www.dropbox.com/s/f8bwrri1m85apck/lots-of-sdk.mov?dl=0 (before and after sort of worse case)
• More add-ons to be turned in Firefox 50 e10s

E10s

• A top crash that's preventing us from turning e10s on for users with ru locales is being reviewed and should be uplifted to 51
• Tab switch spinner investigations ongoing. We've got BHR stacks for hangs that occur during tab switch, and we're posting them / examining them in bug 1310255
• The team is going to do a funnelcake study to see how e10s impacts user retention and usage: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1200276
• Whitelisting add-ons that have multiprocessCompatible=true in their install.rdf is blocked on https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1309351 and https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1309350
  • Might slip target of Firefox 50
• Touch events have been enabled in Firefox 52 with e10s enabled: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1272268
• RTL support for Windows and OS X has been signed off by SV for Firefox 51
  • RTL support for Linux has landed for Firefox 52
• Multiple content processes is going to be enabled in Firefox 52 Nightly ( https://mzl.la/297iqN4 ) but will not ride the trains just yet

Firefox Core Engineering (+ team formerly known as "performance engineering")

• Crash stuff:
  • landed client-side stackwalking (added basic stacks in crash pings) on Nightly and Aurora last week; aiming for client stacks from release in 52 (fingers crossed): https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1280469
  • content crash pings are landing this week (riding): https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1293656
• Data reporting stuff:
  • telemetry-based stability dashboard (for relman) WIP: https://chutten.github.io/telemetry_crashes/: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1297146
• Update/Install stuff:
  • reducing update size by changing compression algorithm: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=641212
  • lots of bugs landed related to restarting update downloads (instead of restarting) due to network/connectivity errors, etc (stemming from 43.0.1 and 44.x orphan remediation analyses): https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox_Core_Engineering#Orphan_remediation
• FYI:
  • CrashSender to begin in 3-4 weeks: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1310703
  • Flash blocking experimentation is needed SOON, definition and mechanics are underway: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/showdependencytree.cgi?id=1277346&hide_resolved=1
  • Lots of dashboard needs, new hire starting in 3 weeks will be helping on that
  • symbolapi.m.o relaunch is blocked by Ops uptake

Form Autofill

• Landed:
  • Bug 1300988 - Implement an API in the content process to fill a form with a specific form autofill profile using @autocomplete
  • Bug 1309481 - Remove leftover code specific to Logins from JSONFile.jsm and add tests
  • Bug 1310049 - Refactor FormLikeFactory to its own module for use by Form Autofill
  • Bug 1296638 - Switch toolkit Form Autocomplete popup from using a <xul:tree> to using a <xul:richlistbox>
• In Progress
  • Bug 1016733 - Implement form auto-fill profile storage
  • Bug 1300990 - Implement an API in the parent process to decide which values of an autofill profile would be filled in which field
  • Bug 1019471 - Dialog to add/edit/view an autofill profile

Go Faster

• Next areas of focus are likely to be improving the system add-on roll-out facilities (tools to make publishing easier) & update times (time from publish to when a user is running with the update).
  • Restartless system add-ons likely to land soon
  • Other issues being discussed (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1307569)

Platform UI and other Platform Audibles

• scottwu's <input type="time"> picker UI has landed in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1283384 but is disabled by default behind dom.forms.datetime
• GMP installation for 64-bit OS's was fixed by daleharvey in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1309463
• seanlee has a WIP patch in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1217162 to show contextual feedback when the user is entering login data into an insecure form
• mconley is working with layout to make it easier to style checkbox / radio boxes: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=418833
• Simplify Page feature for Print Preview has been disabled in a few areas:
  • Only enabled on Nightly for Linux until https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1306295 is fixed
  • Enabled on Windows up to early beta until https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1306294 and https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1306299 are fixed

Privacy/Security

• Captive portal work picking up steam. Hoping to let it ride the trains in 52.
• The latest patch for permission prompts is in the second round of reviews.
• Doing a second user research study this week to determine if removing the close button (x) from the permission prompts is problematic for our users.
• 2 out of 3 platform bugs regarding XUL panels that are blocking the merge of elm to m-c have landed. Thanks Firefox Core Engineering!
• Bug 1240829 - Contextual insecure password warning is still targeting 52. Getting help from seanlee, jkt, mconley, and daleharvey.

Quality of Experience

• Evan Tseng is looking at Reader Mode QX bugs.
• Firefox Theming API demo building on cedar twig is chugging along:
  • Meta bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1306671
  • K-9 landed dynamic themes support demo!
  • mikedeboer landed Chrome theme compat demo
  • working on Developer Edition theme demo

Search

• Fixed various regressions around the awesomebar (1290490, 1294887, 1295253, 1296366, 1306308), but more importantly, fixed some telemetry bugs (1306639) that were discovered after the recent changes for one-off search buttons in the location bar. The beta channel proved immune to these issues, so the SHIELD study for unified search can proceed as planned.
• Posted a new build for proposed changes to the mouseover and key handling behavior for feedback from UX (1295458).
• Started planning for the Cliqz Test Pilot experiment.
• Not Search-specific, but a notable landing nevertheless: Make browser_parsable_css.js test cover all CSS files we are shipping (1221383).

Sync/FxA

• [past] heard there is much work going on in this area wrt updating and modernizing the desktop code.

Video control visual update (bug 1271765)

• The HTML-based UI is done but blocked on a needed layout change (patch ready for review)
• Will start adding tests for the new UI, the newly added CC-button feature, and overall UI afterwards.

Content Handling Enhancement

Download Panel [seanlee / Rex Lee]

• Resolved 950058 - Split each download item so that all of the right part of it activates the action
• Resolved 1289139 - Use SVG for the button icons in the Downloads Panel

Dialog Removal [alphan]

• Investigating approaches and feasibility of bug 1270405's dependent bugs
• Waiting for Peter Dolanjski's feedback on re-scoping with Paolo

RDF Replacement [alphan/eden] working on these

• 1287664 - Revise helperApp.js and(/or) enhance nsIHandlerService API based on the result of bug 1287661
• 1287658 - Implement migration from mimeTypes.rdf to the JSON Handler Store

Protocol Handler Registration Flow [eden]

• Discussing UX spec with Gijs and Paolo

This week I learned…