Firefox2/StatusMeetings/2006-02-07

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

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 nSysInstaller (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
• 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

New Items to Consider

• autoupdate bugs
• polish bugs