Firefox2/StatusMeetings/2006-02-07

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In Attendance

phone: mpilgrim, axel, bsmedberg
room: schrep, cbeard, timr, rebron, rob_strong, jesse, dietrich, timr, davel, beng, darin, bryner, annie, brettw, linus, maria, beltzner, mconnor, pgreen, jhughes

Status Updates

Places

  • organized bugs into four categories:
    • a1/dogfood
    • a2/feature complete
    • b1/feature frozen
    • b2/future
    • these are target milestones
  • still working through performance problems and not-working things
  • not sure if things will be ready for current A1 target
    • want to ensure that there's no dataloss or instability problems before a1
    • hoping to be ready no later than 2 weeks from now
    • might want to cut alpha1 without --enable-places
  • davel: be sure to include pointers to test plans and tools and hooks
  • changes are being checked into trunk and 1_8_BRANCH at the same time

Tabbed Browsing

  • close-buttons-on-tabs currently on trunk (ready for A1)
  • undoCloseTab hacked up solution in place, need to figure out UI
  • still working on tab overflow solutions, focusing on making it feel right
    • solution in progress seems to be to use [<<] / [>>] buttons at each end
  • won't be ready for current A1 target

Extension Manager Enhancements

  • working on blacklisting, extension dependencies and support for locale packs, all of which are intertwined
    • on track to hit A1 target
  • some of the UI designs required a browser-notification system which isn't going to hit, so we'll need to revisit the UI
  • plans in place to change the extension manager UI, but haven't started work on that yet

Installer

  • w32 only, moving to NSIS Installer (nullSoft/OSS), saves us 130K on the installer size, gets rid of our previous solution which was pretty messy
  • pretty much ready to go, just need to merge to tree
  • mpilgim: there's an existing bug on file for supporting installers in high contrast themes, be sure to test your new solution on that, too.
  • axel: what's the impact for l10n repackaging?
    • when it lands, it will be no different than our current solution for repackaging
  • bsmedberg: we can still land this in an installer2 directory for now
  • should be ready for A2
  • need to create a single tracking bug
  • axel: what's the license
    • mpilgrim: seems to be ZLIB

Search Engine UI

  • gavin sharp is pursuing this, will be granted ownership
  • ben has asked him to triage the bugs and set target milestones
  • starting from the prototype from last year
  • not ready for current A1 target date
    • gavin: the backend portion is targetted at A1, UI refinements to follow for A2
  • axel: are we changing the format for the searchplugins for 2.0?
    • ben: yes, to an XML format that is similar but not necessarily identical to OpenSearch
    • mconnor: and we'll provide a converter so that we can parse and convert existing sherlock-formatted plugins
    • jesse: why not the same format as Microsoft?
    • cbeard: OpenSearch 1.1 isn't actually open, it's available for other people to use, but it's controlled by Amazon. So we aim to be compatible and extensible with any other emerging standards.
    • ben: the implementation will be similar to OpenSearch, but the namespace might be different to allow us to extend it as required. We're leaving ourselves open to wherever this ecosystem moves.
  • cbeard: will we have support for rich-AJAXy-find as you type stuff?
    • ben: should be easy to add on to the format we're planning, but not currently scoped during development

Visual Refresh

  • not ready for current A1 target
  • looking at a quick RFP/contest solution to find a superstar in waiting who wants to help us here
  • need an offline session with cbeard, beltzner, schrep and ben to build requirements for the "new look" of Firefox
  • ben: should probably ping SilverOrange about this, Steve is interested
  • cbeard to kick this off

Platform Uplift

  • neither brendan nor jst are at this meeting
  • darin: a lot of patches are trickling over already due to the current branch landing strategy
  • schrep: goal is to control which ones will make it into 1.8.1 to be both proactive and reactive for quality.
  • darin: sounds urgent, since we've been allowing checkins for the past two weeks
  • schrep: by next status meeting, I'll have a better heads up

Inline Spell Check

  • mostly works on trunk, no work has been done to port to branch
  • main thing to figure out is how to distribute the dictionary
    • a size issue (200kb compressed)
    • bsmedberg: extension locales buys us 70 more KB
    • rob_strong: I bought you the other 130KB with the installer!
    • axel: we have a licensing issue with any localized dictionary, L10n:Dictionaries to track them
  • would be nice to see a plan for including it and moving it to the branch
  • ben: there's a lot of dependency on the extension locale stuff that needs to be resolved before we move this to branch

Instrumentation / Exit Surveys

  • exit surveys in uninstaller can be in 1.5.0.2, actually
  • exit surveys can be localized, but our uninstaller is en-US only atm
  • can start offering the exit survey to en-US for A1 as well
  • some design on instrumentation on the wiki

Session Saver

  • not started
  • dietrich and mconnor starting in on implementation
  • annie: I have some notes from when I looked at things that go on a wiki page
  • dietrich: I'll set up a wiki page!
  • dveditz: why not just reuse session saver?
    • code is pretty bad, although its feature set is interesting

Branding & Update Systems

  • this is distribution support stuff
  • how we do client channel support, eula, repackages
  • per channel configuration, etc
  • schrep: this one goes into rob_strong's bucket

RSS

  • robert sayre is working on a generic feed parsing service that will be available at the platform level
  • mpilgrim: I wrote one in python, if that helps; I think that robert is basically converting mine see bug 325080. Keeping an eye on this is on my list of things to do
  • ben: I tried a prototype to show "not-xml" in the content area, and it sort of worked, in that you saw the content and the source was visible in the view-source. Some problems around pages being served in the wrong type, and we might be able to get around that with content sniffing.
  • darin: content-sniffing should be easier to do on trunk than on branch
  • after that 3 or 4 weeks of UI work on top of these underlying pieces
  • ben: I've been doing a minimum-work UI approach
  • cbeard: any thought towards feed previews?
  • ben: it should be simple to do; potentially in scope, but we need to be cautious of apple's patents in this area
  • davel: content-sniffing will likely require some regression testing
    • darin: that should be possible and fairly easy to do
  • axel: what about our approach of transforming the document using a stylesheet?
    • ben: the viewer needs some chrome privs, so this might not be feasible, although it's a good idea!

Status Indication UI

  • not going to make Firefox 2

Offline mode / better use of cache

  • set of low hanging fruit that's doable for Firefox2
    • code is overly cautious
    • we don't take advantage of the cache information we have now
    • when user changes networks to one that requires proxy-autoconfig, the browser should try reloading the pack file before ditching
  • higher level issues like detection and rich offline use won't make it

Pluggable Download Manager

  • not going to make Firefox 2

Anti-Phishing

  • cbeard: taking ownership and moving to higher priority

Schedule Revisit

  • A1 seems awfully unexciting at the moment
  • certainly seems like it won't be good for public feedback as we had hoped
  • ben: I think Places can get to a1 status in two weeks
  • davel: I've got a group of 8-10 undergrads in Florida who would be willing to pound on things from a QA perspective
  • overhead for A1 release would be small, probably just post nightly builds
    • might want to push them to the beta channel, but need to be careful there
    • major releases take 3-4 days for smoketesting
  • A1 needs to have dogfood level of places and tabbed browsing
  • ben: are there similar gecko milestone dates that we can sync to?
    • schrep: there should be, definitely, will look at that
  • looking at a global schedule slip of 2 weeks
  • feel that the other milestone separations are reasonable
  • smedberg: when would we diverge for 1_8_1_BRANCH?
    • schrep: we'd be targeting that for beta

Other Business

  • decided to use dev-apps-firefox as the newsgroup/mailing list for discussion of Firefox development issues
  • davel: we need a better communication mechanism between business development, marketing and engineering
  • axel: trying to write a XULRunner application that does automatic trademark checks on the source side, so hopefully we'll have less trouble with that this time around

New Items to Consider

  • polish bugs
  • update system bugs discovered in the 1.5 --> 1.5.0.1 update

Action Items

  • Firefox 2 schedule to slip by 14 days, need to get a clear picture of what the A1 "dogfood" release will look like.

ACTIONS

  • beltzner
    • update Firefox2 planning documents as per this meeting's outcome
    • add feature plan pages for those features that don't already have one
    • update Visual Refresh wiki documentation
    • determine what (if any) Visual Refresh features can make A1
  • ben
    • update RSS wiki documentation
    • verify that Places A1 deliverables will be achievable in 14 days
    • determine what RSS features can make A1
  • brettw
    • update Inline Spell Check wiki documentation
    • determine what Inline Spell Check features can make A1
  • cbeard
    • complete PRD documentation
    • hold breakout session on Anti-Phishing w/ben, beltzner, schrep
    • hold breakout session on visual refresh w/beltzner, schrep
    • update Anti-Phishing wiki documentation
    • determine what Anti-Phishing features can make A1
  • darin
    • update Offline Mode, Instrumentation documentation
    • determine what Offline Mode, Instrumentation features can make A1
  • dietrich
    • update Session Restore wiki documentation
    • determine what (if any) Session Restore features can make A1
  • gavin
    • update Search Enhancements wiki documentation
    • determine what Search Enhancements can make A1
  • mconnor
    • update Tabbed Browser Enhancements wiki documentation
    • determine what Tabbed Browser Enhancements can make A1
  • rob_strong
    • meet with schrep to determine nature of Branding & Update channel feature
    • update Extension Manager wiki documentation
    • create Installer wiki documentation
    • determine what Extension Manager, Installer features can make A1