Firefox2/PRD

Please do not edit these pages without permission of the Bon Echo steering group. Your feedback and comments are welcomed on the discussion page.

Firefox 2 Product Requirements This document sets out the product requirements and prioritizations for the development and release of Firefox 2, code-named "Bon Echo", presently under development with an expected release in Q3 2006. The intended audience for this document is the community involved in designing, developing, testing and managing the release of the product as well as partners and third-party developers who are building software that extends Bon Echo. All press inquiries should be directed to the Mozilla Press Centre.

Revision History

Date	v	Description	Author(s)
2006/03/07	0.1	first draft	cbeard, beltzner, mconnor, ben

Vision

Bon Echo will focus on user interface innovations that help the user in their common browsing tasks interacting with search, bookmarks and history, and improvements to our existing capabilities for tabbed browsing, RSS handling, managing extensions, security and performance.

Put into marketing-speak ..:

Bon Echo will build on the success of Firefox 1.5 with better performance, and improvements to virtually every part of the web experience, including new capabilities for managing and organizing a user's personal web information. From best-of-breed tabbed browsing to industry-leading web standards support, Bon Echo will demonstrate Mozilla's continued commitment to driving the web forward for every user, everywhere.

See also: Firefox Product Development Charter

Product Audience

Bon Echo will continue Mozilla's focus on the individual user. We will serve the widest possible set of people who have the most common goals and are trying to accomplish the most common web browsing tasks.

Context and Environment

Many environment factors will influence feature prioritization and release management decisions for Bon Echo. The success of Firefox has led to a more competitive and innovative environment for Web browser and Web technologies. It has also provided new opportunities for distribution and reach into new markets. Also, Microsoft will release an updated version of both their Web browser and operating system in the second half of 2006.

Feature Set

Bon Echo will retain all of the existing Firefox features, with improvements that:

• update the look and feel of the browser,
• improve and augment the capabilities for Bookmarks and History,
• improve the user experience of web browsing and tabbed browsing,
• improve and augment the capabilities for handling web feeds,
• improve the user experience of adding, removing and managing extensions,
• add new capabilities to protect users from dangerous extensions,
• improve and augment the capabilities for web search,
• make it easier to install and distribute the browser,
• include the latest security and stability updates,
• include new security features to protect users from phishing,
• update our end user documentation so it's more useful to users looking for help.

These feature requirements are described in more detail below.

Release Roadmap

Bon Echo will meet the requirements of the Firefox Release Roadmap as a front-end feature release based upon the 1.8 branch of Gecko, that will preserve API capability with Firefox 1.5.

Milestones

Release	Date	Description
Alpha 1	March 2006	Developer Preview ("Dogfood") includes new infrastructure pieces for stress testing and API feedback intended for developers only, no guarantees about stability or dataloss
Alpha 2	May 2006	Feature Complete all backend API/hooks are complete and being used by UI UI design for features is complete all new features are at least functional to the point of placeholder UI intended for product testers and high-risk early adopters
cut MOZILLA_1_8_1_BRANCH, if desired (this kills MOZILLA_1_8_BRANCH)
Beta 1	June 2006	Feature Frozen all feature work is complete, including UI all strings are complete and available for l10n to start intended for beta users
Beta 2	July 2006	Product Frozen based on feedback from Beta 1 all feature work is complete, including UI all strings are frozen intended for beta users
RC 1	August 2006	Release Candidate based on bugfixes from Beta 2 should represent final product intended for wide audience of early adopters
RC 2	August 2006	Release Candidate (if needed) based on bugfixes from RC 1 should represent final product intended for wide audience of early adopters
FX 2	August 2006	Final Release based on bugfixes from RC 2

Priorities

#	Priority	Description
P1	Mandatory	Product will not ship without these.
P2	Highly Desirable	A key feature that will make the product more complete, has great benefits to the end-user and major strategic impact.
P3	Nice to Have	Lowest priority feature that may be incorporated, dropping first in favour of delivering P2 items.
P4	Future	Intended for future release, included as they may influence design decisions and should be associated with the roadmap.
P5	Deleted	Requirements that have been deleted from the product roadmap.

Product Requirements

Ownership & Change Management

Discussion about product management for Bon Echo will take place in the Bon Echo steering committee (which is an open subscription mailing list).

The Bon Echo PRD is maintained by the Product Management Team, including Ben Goodger, Christopher Beard, Mike Beltzner, and Mike Connor who work together with the Bon Echo steering committee to deliver the overall product, defining content, prioritizing features and co-ordinating product delivery within the context of the Mozilla project.

As defined below, Feature Managers work with the Implementation Owners to deliver a specific feature area within the overall product, prioritizing the components of those features and co-ordinating the feature delivery with other feature areas and products.

Any proposed changes to these feature level requirements should be written up and submitted to the Bon Echo steering committee for discussion, and the Product Management team will make the appropriate changes to this document.

To nominate a bug that is not directly related to any of the requirements listed below as one that should be fixed as part of the Bon Echo project, mark it as blocking-firefox2? or blocking1.8.1? depending on the module.

Release Criteria

Requirements for release of Bon Echo are:

• all P1 product requirements are complete
• no functional regressions from Firefox 1.5
• no performance regressions from Firefox 1.5
• full QA testing has been completed on the release candidate code
• all bugs marked blocking-firefox2+/? or blocking1.8.1+/? have been resolved
• size of Windows compressed binary is less than or equal to 4.9MB
• l10n builds are available for Tier 1 languages
• Sec 508 Compliance form has been completed

Cross-Feature Requirements

• all new code must be documented on Mozilla Developer Central
• all user interface code must meet the Mozilla Accessibility Guidelines
• new or modified strings must be brought to the attention of localization team
• new or modified user interface behaviour must be brought to the attention of the documentation team
• all bugs must be marked with their target milestone and assigned prioritization
• any bug that blocks completion of a P1 product requirement should be marked either blocking-firefox2+ or blocking1.8.1+
• any bug that significantly affects quality, stability or performance should be marked either blocking-firefox2? or blocking1.8.1?

Visual Refresh

Feature Manager: beltzner

Bon Echo will update its appearance to look and feel like a modern native application on all platforms. Incremental polish and refinement to the user interface will focus on improving the usability and accessibility of primary product features.

Chrome Polishing
p	m	assigned to	item	bug
1	a2	beltzner	review and simplify existing top level chrome
3	b1	beltzner	consistent terminology and layout in dialogs
3	b1	beltzner	eliminate unneccessary dialogs & UI pieces
Theme Polishing
p	m	implementation owner	item	bug
1	a2	sgarrity	new icons for new features
1	b1	sgarrity	new icons for all themes
1	a2	vlad	ensure that NSITheme supports Windows Vista API
1	b1	sgarrity	polish winstripe based on Windows Vista
2	b1	sgarrity	polish pinstripe based on OS X 10.4
3	b1	sgarrity	polish gnomestripe based on Gnome

Bookmarks and History

Feature Manager: beltzner

Bon Echo will modernize its data model to extend capabilities around synchronizing, storing and retrieving bookmark and history data and meta data. The existing bookmarks UI will be preserved, but augmented to facilitate ease of management, searching, and indexing of web browsing history and sites of interest.

Places
p	m	implementation owner	item	bug
1	a1	ben	implement new data storage layer using SQLlite with no impact to performance (startup, page load, new window times)
1	a2	ben	parity with Firefox 1.x bookmark access points in toolbars and menus
1	a2	ben	parity with existing management methods using drag and drop, clipboard, property editing, etc.
1	b1	ben	easy way to add bookmarks through main browser UI
2	a1	ben	import existing bookmarks and history from Mozilla profiles
2	a2	ben	fast & easy search through bookmarks and history in main browser UI
2	a2	ben	export bookmarks to standard format that can be imported by IE, Opera, Fx1.x
2	a2	ben	developer API to access bookmarks and allow services to act as bookmark sources
3	a2	ben	advanced management and search capabilities for history and bookmarks
3	b1	ben	live bookmarks aggregation through "subscriptions" folder
3	a2	ben	optional ability to annotate bookmarks and history with tags, notes, arbitrary metadata

User Experience

Feature Manager: beltzner

Bon Echo will improve on the web browsing experience with enhancements to tabs, and the ability to restart the browser without losing state. It will also address many frequently raised usability issues to streamline the overall user experience.

Tabbed Browsing
p	m	implementation owner	item	bug
1	a1	mconnor	fix HTML target="" bugs for tabbed browsing
1	a1	mconnor	UI for handling tab overflow
1	b1	mconnor	default destination for new window links is new tabs
1	a1	mconnor	improve discoverability and usability of close tab button
1	a1	mconnor	implement heuristic for tab close selection behaviour to match user expectations
2	a2	mconnor	UI for re-opening accidentally closed tabs
2	a2	mconnor	UI for managing multiple tabs (preview, switching, etc)
2	b1	beltzner	usabilty study on close tab buttons
4	b1	mconnor	visual animation enhancements for tab re-ordering, preview, etc
4	b1	mconnor	ability to tear off tabs
Session Restore
p	m	implementation owner	item	bug
1	a2	dietrich	restore session after an application forced restart
2	a2	dietrich	restore session after a crash
3	a2	dietrich	option to allow advanced users to always restore session after normal shutdown
Spell Check
p	m	implementation owner	item	bug
1	a2	cbeard	license requirements for english dictionary
1	b1	cbeard	license requirements for l10n dictionaries
2	a2	brettw	spell-as-you-type functionality for text fields

Feeds

Feature Manager: cbeard, beng

Bon Echo will make it easier for users to discover, preview and interact with web feeds. It will allow users to selectively view feeds with either Live Bookmarks, web applications, Extensions or standalone applications.

Feed Handling and Parsing
p	m	implementation owner	item	bug
2	a1	ben	new RSS/Atom feed parser based on ...
2	a2	ben	content sniffing to detect when content served as XML or text is actually a feed
2	a2	ben	consistent user experience for previewing, handling & subscribing to feeds when user clicks on links or chrome that lead to feeds (ie: via feed://, link-rel or content sniffing)
2	a2	ben	ability to subscribe to feeds using client app or web service
3	b1	ben	devloper APIs to access to feed content in format-agnostic fashion and feed parser
3	b1	ben	content-area preview of XML-RSS/XML-Atom content
User Interface Requirements
p	m	implementation owner	item	bug
2	a2	ben	low-bar pretty-printing for RSS/Atom that displays content (images, sound files, movie files, text) in a human-readable format
3	a2	ben	chrome priveledged controls for adding/handling feed subscriptions to bookmarks

Extensions

Feature Manager: shaver

Bon Echo will make it easier for users to add, remove, and configure Extensions. It will also provide a mechanism to protect users from potentially malicious or dangerous third-party Extensions.

User Interface Requirements
p	m	implementation owner	item	bug
2	a2	rstrong	new add-ons manager that consolidates and simplifies managament (adding, removing, updating, disabling) themes and extensions
2	a2	rstrong	improve visibility of notification when extension updates are available
2	a2	rstrong	automatic extension updates
2	a2	rstrong	more undestandable extension installation and update dialogs
3	a2	rstrong	add path into extension options from browser options
5	a2	rstrong	password lockdown for extension installation
Extension Blocklisting
p	m	implementation owner	item	bug
1	a1	rstrong	capability to enable, disable, and block installation of extensions based on a blocklist
1	a1	rstrong	new UI to indicate when an extension has been disabled & why
1	a1	justin	server-side resources for hosting the blacklist
1	b1	cbeard	policy and criteria for disabling and re-enabling extensions
Locale Packs
p	m	implementation owner	item	bug
2	a2	rstrong	support for extensions that provide l10n to applications or extensions
2	a2	rstrong	UI indication for extensions that have locale packs associated with them

Search

Feature Manager: cbeard

Bon Echo will modernize the search plugin specification to provide enhanced compatibility and extensibility. It will also make it easier for users to manage their search plugins.

User Interface Requirements
p	m	implementation owner	item	bug
1	a2	gavin	UI for adding and removing search plugins	bug 232272
2	a2	gavin	tool for restoring default search plugins
2	a2	gavin	shadow text in search bar ("Search with Google")
2	a2	gavin	resizable search box
2	a2	gavin	support for multiple search boxes
Searchplugins
p	m	implementation owner	item	bug
2	a1	gavin	new XML based data model for search plugins
2	a1	gavin	import for Open Search format
2	a1	gavin	import for Sherlock format
2	a2	gavin	API for type-ahead find search results
2	a2	gavin	API for adding search engines, including JS methods
2	a2	gavin	discovery of searchplugins using the <link rel> tag
3	a2	gavin	auto-discovery of search plugins

Distribution Support

Feature Manager: cbeard

Bon Echo will include new and enhanced capabilities that will facilitate customization, installation and life cycle support for multiple distribution channels.

Installer
p	m	implementation owner	item	bug
2	a2	rstrong	move to NSIS installer
3	a2	rstrong	have installer only fetch app-extensions for advanced options when selected during install
EULA
p	m	implementation owner	item	bug
1	a2	cbeard	must display EULA on install or on first run when install was silent or when browser was pre-loaded
Distribution Channel Support
p	m	implementation owner	item	bug
1	a2	schrep	mechanism for building co-branded builds for partner distributions
1	a2	schrep	enhancements to software update infrastructre to support N distributions
2	a2	cbeard	ability to select & install phishing protection extensions during installation
2	a2	cbeard	ability to select & install phishing protection extensions on first run
2	a2	cbeard	ability to bundle phishing protection extensions

Infrastructure & Performance

Feature Manager: cbeard

Bon Echo will be optimized and tuned for general web browsing use cases.

Performance
p	m	implementation owner	item	bug
2	b1	graydon?	no regressions in web compatibility
2	b1	graydon?	improve memory usage by 10%
2	b1	graydon?	no regressions in browsing speed / page load times
Gecko 1.9 Platform Uplift
p	m	implementation owner	item	bug
1	b1	shaver	all security patches from gecko 1.9
2	b1	shaver	small, safe, but important gecko 1.9 patches
Instrumentation
p	m	implementation owner	item	bug
2	a2	bryner	data model for user interface instrumentation
2	a2	bryner	API and hooks to instrument user interface
2	a2	bryner	UI to enable/disable instrumentation
2	a2	justin	server-side infrastructure to collect data from instrumented builds

Security

Feature Manager: beltzner, sherman (anti-phishing)

Bon Echo will act as a trusted friend, facilitating as safe and secure browsing experience as possible.

Phishing Protection
p	m	implementation owner	item	bug
1	a2	TBD	basic in-browser phishing protection
1	a2	TBD	bundling or installation wizard to integrate enhanced phising protection
1	a2	TBD	API for phishing protection extensions to use
SSL
p	m	implementation owner	item	bug
1	a1	beltzner	remove SSL2 cyphers from product
3	a2	beltzner	improve UI for SSL/security information
3	a2	beltzner	APIs for 3rd party extensions to provide enhanced security mechanisms

Documentation

Feature Manager: mconnor

End-User Documentation
p	m	implementation owner	item	bug
3	a2	justin	move existing help system to a web-accessible location
3	a2	mconnor	reduce in-product help content to minimum amount required
3	a2	mconnor	replace existing help UI with rich UI that brings user to online help
4	--	mconnor	enhance online help system to be community edited, collect metrics and feedback from users