Firefox2/PRD
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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")
|
| Alpha 2 | May 2006 | Feature Complete
|
| cut MOZILLA_1_8_1_BRANCH, if desired (this kills MOZILLA_1_8_BRANCH) | ||
| Beta 1 | June 2006 | Feature Frozen
|
| Beta 2 | July 2006 | Product Frozen
|
| RC 1 | August 2006 | Release Candidate
|
| RC 2 | August 2006 | Release Candidate (if needed)
|
| FX 2 | August 2006 | Final Release
|
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
High-level 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 | |
| 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 | |