Firefox3/Firefox Requirements

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

Gran Paradiso Product Planning Doc *DRAFT*

Document History

1/1/07 - Wiki-version imported from .doc/.xls working documents (v4a/b from 12/22/06)

Purpose

This document sets out the feature set, product requirements and prioritization for the development and release of Firefox 3, code-named "Gran Paradiso", presently under development with an expected release in Q3 2007.

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 Gran Paradiso.

All press inquiries should be directed to the Mozilla Press Centre.

Definitions

Priority	Description
P1	Mandatory - The set of features required as a minimum for this release to be complete. The 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.
D	Deleted - Requirements that have been deleted from the product roadmap.
Px	Px - Requirements that are proposed but have not yet been approved.

Project Documentation

[Image:fx3-doc-tree.png]

[File:Fx3BigFeatures v5.xls]

[File:Fx3ProductPlan v4.doc]

[File:Fx3ProductDetail v1.doc]

Gran Paradiso Plan

Release Objectives

Some of the key goals for Gran Paradiso include:

• Continue to increase usage share and broaden the Firefox audience
• Offer the best user experience
• Remain true to open source, be dedicated to ensuring “choice and innovation”
• Be a platform for community developers, companies and others
• Be the most secure browser choice

Guiding Principles

The goal of the Firefox project is to deliver the best possible browsing experience to the widest possible set of people.

We aim to do this in part by:

• Delivering the right set of features - not too many or too few. (The goal is to create a useful browser, not a minimal browser.)
• Making as few compromises as possible where user experience is concerned. (We will not compromise the main line UI to placate an element of the community.)
• Develop and maintain an extension system to allow for research into new areas without affecting the core and to allow for techies, early adopters, Web developers and other specific communities to customize their browsers to suit their specific needs without affecting usability or download size for the mass market.
• Retaining a tight command and control hierarchy. UI design is not a committee driven process. Application design must be nimble and testing is better than discussion, so we'll make changes quickly and then get them to people so that we can refine them based on observation of "real" user interactions.
• Deliver software for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, with the goal of integrating as slickly as possible into each of those systems.
• Be, if possible, a vehicle for emerging Mozilla platform APIs including XULRunner, which will allow application developers a means to deploy useful software to people that is not necessarily tied to a particular operating system.

(Adapted from Ben Goodger's Firefox Development Charter, November 28, 2004.)

Audience

There are 4 target sets of users for Gran Paradiso: End Users, Developers, Distributors and Enterprise Users. Note that End Users include a variety of personas that should be identified.

Appearing below are value statements for each target user set, in order or priority for this release.

End Users

• For the general consumer
• Who accesses the web
• Firefox is a web browser
• That provides the best user experience
• Unlike Microsoft Internet Explorer, Opera and Apple Safari
• Our product is open, secure, intuitive, customizable, privacy-sensitive and innovative

Developers

• For content producers, software companies and web application developers
• Who want to deliver services and innovate on the web
• Firefox is a web browser with a highly extensible platform
• That provides the most flexible, easy-to-try, standards-compliant? architecture
• Unlike Microsoft Internet Explorer (and associated Windows technologies)
• Our product offers the most open, secure, standards compliant and easy-to-implement environment

Distributors

• For potential distributors such as search engines, portals, ISPs, ISVs, web sites, PC OEMs and companies, member organizations or affinity groups
• Who wish to expand the reach of their services or engage their community
• Firefox is a web browser with flexible customization and distribution capabilities
• That provides the most straightforward, easy-to-use toolkit and business terms
• Unlike Microsoft Internet Explorer/IEAK
• Our product is {TBD}

Enterprise Users

• For the enterprise user
• Who accesses the web
• Firefox is a web browser
• That provides the best user experience from a corporate environment
• Unlike Microsoft Internet Explorer, Opera and Apple Safari
• Our product is the most open, secure, standards compliant, intuitive and innovative browser

Observations & Assumptions

• Apple will have Safari on Windows with likely ties to iTunes & .Mac
• Microsoft will continue to establish deeper ties from IE7/Vista to live.com & MSN
• One or more Web service providers may introduce their own browsing solution that ties with their services
• Opera will continue to operate in a niche environment

Firefox will win because:

• Users and developers love the extensions and customization available for Firefox
• Perception of fast & slim. For AJAX apps, we are faster
• Perception of security and safety
• WebDev segment love the product for its web compatibility and standards compliance
• Developer tools and support
• Brand value and open source (Participatory culture and community ownership model – by the Web, for the Web)

Release Roadmap

• Issue one major release every year (Fx 3 in 2007, Fx 4 in 2008, etc.) since it helps drive upgrades and adoption
• Target Gran Paradiso for Q3/Q4 2007
• Mozilla 2 will take 2 years to bake and stabilize so target it for Fx 4
• Since Firefox 2 did not include platform upgrades need to get Gecko 1.9/Cairo out the door
• Need approximately one year to help define, build and deliver Gran Paradiso
• First alpha should include at minimum all platform pieces (Gecko, cycle collector, reflow branch, etc.) and selected features
• {Strongly consider} options to do more as incremental updates, e.g. Extension Packs, Fx 2.5, Fx 3.5, etc.

High-Level Feature Plan

The proposed major theme for Gran Paradiso is “improved information and content management” {TODO: needs better wording}. This is the area that we’ll do the most innovation in. Gran Paradiso will continue to improve in areas where we’ve traditionally been strong in: security, usability, extensibility and customization, performance, web standards and compatibility.

Features for Gran Paradiso will fall into one of the following categories.

For Users

• Information Management includes Bookmarks, History, Content Handling, Content Editing, Printing and Microformats
• Security including Privacy, Phishing Protection, Addons and Password Management
• Usability/UI Improvements including Search, Tabbed Browsing, OS Integration & Accessibility
• Customization - ability to discover and manage addons
• Performance - how fast Firefox operates
• Localization - operating in non US English
• Installation & Auto-Update
• Support & Help

For Developers

• Web Standards & Compatibility (e.g. ACID2, CSS2.1, SVG via Gecko 1.9, EV certs, etc.)
• Web Developer Tools
• Extension Developer Tools

For Distributors

• Browser Customization

For Enterprises

• {Selected at-par features}

Cross-Cutting Concerns & Fundamentals

The following areas were deemed as fundamentals or cross-cutting concerns for all Firefox features. Each feature area should consider impact and orientation with respect to these.

Security

What are the security implications of this feature. Conduct a security review.

Performance

How does this feature impact various performance metrics and resource usage

Customization

User-facing personalization

Extensibility

Developer facing/API's

Distribution

Do we need to allow distro partners to customize or change settings associated with this feature/area

Detailed Feature Plan

Based upon shared document from Google cut-and-pasted here as of 12-21-2006 5:30PM - http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dcpjg7kv_5fxpxtv

Functional Requirements & Tasks

S/M/L indicate rough engineering estimate of difficulty and work required, in order to aid in planning.

P1s

• L - Improve Addon extension install experience (needs more detail)
• S - Unified addon prefs in Prefs Dialog
• S - Addon manager UI improvements (buttons in different places, right-click menu move to buttons, etc.)
• L - Extensible bookmarks back-end platform (robust-> protects against bookmark loss)
• M - Web application content handling support
• M - Robust plugin support for Flash, Acrobat, WMV, Quicktime, Java (needs more detail)
• M - Improved Printing Support
• M - MSI Install on Windows
• M - Password Manager / Identity Manager (?) redesign (needs more detail)
• L - Security / Privacy Context UI redesign (the lock icon sucks; needs more detail)
• M - Airbag (needs min requirement to be defined)
• L - Improve the support environment from beginning to end (more details required)
• ? - UI re-design: Extension Install
• ? - UI re-design: Password / Identity Manager
• ? - UI re-design: Security/Privacy Context

P2s

• L - Built-in support for password hash
• M - Private Browsing Mode
• S - Save as PDF
• L - Malicious site blacklisting (the malware thing)
• M - Real pause/resume in Download Manager
• L - Framework for microformat detection
• M - Detection of common microformats (hCard, hCal)
• M - Application handling of microformats
• M - Hooks to support some identity management solution (cardspace/sxip/openID/AOL namespace/passport/LibertyAlliance :-)
• M - Move Help content to web
• ? - UI re-design: Bookmarks Manager
• ? - UI re-design: Download Manager

P3s

• M - Bookmarks Manager redesign (needs more detail)
• M - Download Manager redesign (needs more detail)
• M - MacOS X Keychain integration
• Full-text indexing and search of history (might be P2, but there are a lot of int'l issues that are big unknowns)
• Extension install without restart
• Single-file Page Storage (like MHTML, but different -- is pinning things in the cache enough, and making a list available? -- is print to PDF enough?)
• Handling of back/forward with POST (get rid of the "Do you want to resend the request dialog?" and go back to cached data)
• Out-of-band login support
• Pluggable identity mgmt mechanism framework (needs more detail)
• Context-sensitive help throughout app
• One-off searches with specialized search engines (e.g. searching with IMDB without making it your default search engine)
• Vista Parental Controls support
• Tab Grouping
• Tab Expose
• Windows Group Policy support

Non-functional Requirements & Tasks

• Peformance evaluation and test suite

Investigation

Needs Immediate Investigation for Scoping/Definition

• Low Rights Mode (probably not feasible) (need to find out about feasibility and decide if this is Moz1.9 or Moz2)
• Identity Management and how it may intersect with Password Management
• Define minimum requirements for Airbag
• Define minimum requirements for "improving the support environment"
• Define minimum requirements Privacy/Security context UI

Pending Evaluation

• Add-on Security model
• Ability to discover add-ons, ease of adoption, supportability
• Form content mgmt, loss prevention
• Revised Security Context UI
• Revised First Run Experience
• Showcase breadth of ways to show all customization
• TTS/Screenreader support
• Cairo interaction - visual momentum

Appendix 1 - Big Feature List

Target	Category	Functional Area	Priority
End User	Addons	Improve addon install experience	P1
End User	Addons	Improve preference management for addons	P1
End User	Addons	Revised Addons management	P1
End User	Bookmarks	Revised Bookmark Manager	P2
End User	Bookmarks	Extensibility platform (with sync support)	P1
End User	History	Revised History Solution	P2
End User	Content Handling	Config UI for application integration	P1
End User	Content Handling	Fx be able to display common content such as Flash, Acrobat, Java, WM	P1
End User	Printing	Revise printing experience	P1
End User	Installation & Auto-Update	Vista-compatibility for installation	P1
End User	Privacy	Private browsing mode	P1
End User	Phishing Protection	Add Malware protection	P2
End User	Addons	Addons Security	P2
End User	Security	Low Rights Mode	P2
End User	Addons	Ability to discover addons	P2
End User	Content Handling	Snapshoting or hiving of pages	P3
End User	Content Handling	Revised Download Manager	P2
End User	Content Editing	Form content management, prevent loss	P2
End User	Microformats	Detect & display microformats	P2
End User	Microformats	Configure application handlers for microformat data	P2
End User	Localization	Ensuring all critical areas of browser are localization-ready	P1
End User	Password & Identity Mgmt	Revised Password Manager	P1
End User	Password & Identity Mgmt	Identity Mgmt solution, e.g. OpenID, CardSpace	P2
End User	Security	Revised Security Context UI	P2
End User	Stability	Airbag	P2
End User	Support & Help	New support mechanism and help system	P2
End User	Usability/UI Improvements	Revised First Run Experience	P2
End User	Customization	Showcase breadth of ways to show all customizations	P3
End User	Parental Controls	Parental Controls Support	P3
End User	Support & Help	Context Sensitive	P3
End User	Support & Help	Help should be hosted	P2
End User	Search	Enhancement to Search	P3
End User	Tabbed Browsing	Enhancements to Tabbed Browsing	P3
End User	Accessibility	TTS/Screenreader support	P3
End User	Visual Playfulness	Cairo inteactions - visual momentum	P3
Developers	Web Standards & Compatibility	CSS 2.1	P2
Developers	Web Standards & Compatibility	SVG/Canvas	P2
Developers	Web Standards & Compatibility	Gecko 1.9 for standards support and room for performance improvements	P2
Developers	Web Standards & Compatibility	Reflow branch for xxxx	P2
Developers	Web Standards & Compatibility	Layout mods (roc) for xxxx	P2
Developers	Web Standards & Compatibility	EV Certs	P2
Developers	Web Standards & Compatibility	Cairo mods for better more native MacOS look and feel	P2
Developers	Web Developer Tools	Add new microformat detectors	P3
Developers	Web Developer Tools	Register new microformat handlers	P3
Developers	Web Standards & Compatibility	ACID 2	P3
Distributors	Browser Customization	Lock in branding, cannot uninstall	P2
Distributors	Browser Customization	Smooth upgrade while retaining branding customizations	P2
Enterprises	Installation & Auto-Update	Windows MSI package support	P2
Enterprises	Management	Windows Group Policy support	P2

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

Milestones

Milestone	Description
A1	3.0a1 - Gran Paradiso Alpha 1
A2	3.0a2 - Gran Paradiso Alpha 2
B1	3.0b1 - Gran Paradiso Beta 1
B2	3.0b2 - Gran Paradiso Beta 2

Note: Milestone targets are included in this document for initial planning purposes, authoratative landing targets will continue to be held per individual bug, and the latest tracking status for each feature area will be listed in the most recent status meeting minutes.