Firefox/Goals/2013Q2

Firefox Desktop

Search Hijacking

• [ON TRACK] remove use of keyword.URL
• [ON TRACK] put all search prefs under user control
• [ON TRACK] have a plan: prompt-on-engine-change dialog/notification

Performance

• Add-on manager startup
  • [ON TRACK] eliminate unnecessary main-thread I/O
  • [ON TRACK] investigate simplified storage back-end (SQLite->JSON)
• Thumbnail service
  • [ON TRACK] no main thread impact from thumbnailing
• New download back-end
  • [ON TRACK] landed and used by at least one consumer (no main thread I/O)
• New tab page
  • [ON TRACK] reduce impact on tab animation
• Password Manager
  • [ON TRACK] eliminate main-thread I/O
• localStorage
  • [ON TRACK] Eliminate all uses of localStorage in application code

Australis

• [ON TRACK] Merged to mozilla-central for Firefox 24 (with intent to ride that train)

Profile Reset

• [ON TRACK] Improve functionality and expose it more. (Gathering in bug 851364)

Permissions UI

• [ON TRACK] Expose a lightweight UI (not about:permissions) for managing permissions you have granted to a site. (old mockup: http://cl.ly/image/3u3M2w3O3w1X)

Stability

• [ON TRACK] Develop and deploy a system to allow 3rd parties to submit encrypted/obfuscated symbols to Mozilla, and get popular addons and driver vendors to send us symbols.
• [ON TRACK] Develop reports to allow prioritization of potentially exploitable crashes.

Plugins

• [ON TRACK] Make plugin and plugin instance instantiation asynchronous: implemented behind a pref, this will land on -central but may need to be preffed off because of web content breakage
• [ON TRACK] Profile Flash IPC messages and rearrange event delivery to delay painting and networking events when synchronous events are pending.

Firefox Developer Tools

• Mobile Everywhere

Add-on SDK

• [ON TRACK] UX work
• [ON TRACK] Places API
• [ON TRACK] Add-ons run with access to a DOM window

Script and Performance Tools

• [ON TRACK] Scratchpad remoted and integrated with the debugger.
• [ON TRACK] FPS monitor, frame boundaries in the profiler.
• [ON TRACK] tagStack, XHR breakpoints.

Content Tools

• [ON TRACK] Finish remoting the Inspector.
• Plan and begin executing authoring strategy. Which means:
  • [ON TRACK] create firm UX proposal for in-browser authoring,
  • [ON TRACK] integrate Style Editor and Highlighter,
  • [ON TRACK] prototype external editor integration.
• [ON TRACK] Provide metrics on Developer Tool usage through FHR probes.

Firefox for Android

Profile Related Work

Various things that are based on profiles, while trying to avoid Sync/PiCL dependencies:

• [ON TRACK] Profile Reset
• [ON TRACK] Guest Mode (Switching to a temporary profile)
• [ON TRACK] Kid Mode (A profile with strong parental controls)
• [ON TRACK] Senior Mode (A profile with less options and designed pure ease-of-use)

Reader Enhancements

Reader is one of Firefox Android's most differentiating features. We have plans to add more to the core in Q2:

• [ON TRACK] Night Mode (ambient light based background toggle)
• [ON TRACK] Sans Serif/Serif font toggle
• [ON TRACK] Open into Reading List from home screen
• [ON TRACK] Add to Reading List from external apps (twitter)
• [ON TRACK] Text-to-Voice investigations (investigate the technology)
• [ON TRACK] Twitter card support for richer Reading List (investigate the design)

WebRT

• [ON TRACK] Packaged app support
• [ON TRACK] APK wrapper support (goal is to uplift to Marketplace)
• [ON TRACK] Turn off some browser-centric features while in App mode

Game/TV Form Factor

• [ON TRACK] Gamepad controller support
• [ON TRACK] TV layout support

User Efficency/Cleanup

• [ON TRACK] Hostname completion
• [ON TRACK] Keyboard shortcuts
• [ON TRACK] SNAV
• [ON TRACK] Quickly share using last "Share App" from menu
• [ON TRACK] Improve Settings UI
• [ON TRACK] Improve Session Restore

Firefox for Metro

• [ON TRACK] Feature-complete awesome/start screen
• [ON TRACK] Uplift from mozilla-central to mozilla-aurora

Community Development

• [ON TRACK] Establish a roadmap for contributors so that they can view their progress on Mozillians and can see what the next "level up" is.
• [ON TRACK] Implement engineering contributor rewards program, including both recognition/badges and "stuff".
• [ON TRACK] Automate, either through bugzilla-anthropology or Bugzilla proper, the awarding of many of the badges in the Engineering badging effort.
• [ON TRACK] Design and implement a set of metrics to measure Mozilla's support for volunteer engineering, and volunteer participation/effectiveness for deployment in Q3.
• [ON TRACK] Request for every team in engineering: describe what a "minimum viable contributor" is for participating on that team, including time commitments and resources required.

FHR

Desktop

• [ON TRACK] reduce fsyncs to one per day
• [ON TRACK] move session/activity tracking into Gecko/C++
• [ON TRACK] ensure measurements outside of collection time do not incur fsyncs

Android

• [ON TRACK] fully-featured native Android FHR client landed.

Platform Integration

• [ON TRACK] Continued support of Firefox for Metro goals
• [ON TRACK] Continued Mac OS X integration work with a focus on Australis
• Stub installer
  • [ON TRACK] Implement a minimum of two recommendations to improve user install success rate based on ping data analysis
• App Update
  • [ON TRACK] Installations on previous version analysis