Technology Preview

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Firefox Technology Previews

After the release of Firefox 3, we're going to have some features available for testing that weren't quite ready in time for the Firefox 3 beta cycle. It's difficult to say how these will go once they get in the hands of real users. The best course of action is to give interested users a chance to sample new innovations without facing the stability problems of nightly trunk builds. Those builds are changing the core of Mozilla, and doing long term work that must be done for the health of the project.

We should have a different venue for testing isolated new features, one that doesn't concern itself with new string APIs or new garbage collection algorithms.

No Release Commitments

The features in these releases may appear in future releases, such as Firefox 4 and beyond, or they may never appear. It is a venue for experimentation with incremental changes, and decisions not to move forward with a feature are likely.

Focus

Technology Preview releases center on 3-4 distinct features. There may be other changes accompanying those, but they will be dropped if they aren't in shape and the 3-4 main features are ready to go.

Requirements

Some of this shouldn't need to be repeated, but it's here, just in case. All new code must come with regression tests, and be thoroughly fuzzed before release. New code must not break extensions, unless the change is required to implement one of the 3-4 gating features.

Technology Preview 1

Gating Features

These are the 3-4 features needed for a successful technology preview.

* JS Worker Threads
* Content Restrictions / <module> isolation (one or the other)
* Private Browsing
* Secure Login UI, first available for TLS-SRP (bug 405155)

Other Things We Might Take

We'll take these, but we won't wait if the four things above are ready.

* <video> 
* Keyboard Shortcut / TypeAheadFind enhancements
* Tab Expose
* Tab Tearoff
* SRP HTTP Auth
* DOMParser for text/html
* JSONRequest
* Places enhancements
* SQLite with full-text indexing

Other Other Things

Better be well-tested and low-risk. We don't want regressions to detract from the experience of the glimpse into new browser advances, for those who are interested.

Dates

This is still fuzzy.

First Technology Preview

Late May / Early June 2008

Follow Up Release

Mid July 2008