Firefox/Features/Expose Add-on Performance

Status

Team

Open issues/risks

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Stage 1: Definition

1. Feature overview

Users should be informed when an add-on they are about to install or have installed causes Firefox performance and or memory problems. This information should be presented at AMO and in the Firefox Add-ons Manager.

2. Users & use cases

We should develop a new Add-ons policy, and acompanying AMO and Firefox technology, which says that we will inform our add-on users and prospective add-on users about specific add-ons that can be proved to have a significant and excessive impact on memory usage and/or performance. I propose we test for start-up performance impact, page load performance impact, start-up memory use impact, and memory leaks.

The policy should specify that we will notify the authors of add-ons as soon as we discover a problem and it should have a grace period for correcting any excessive memory or performance impact. I propose, as a straw-man, half a release cycle or 3 weeks from notification.

If after the grace period the add-on is not brought within compliance, we should add it to a list of ill-behaving add-ons. That list would be consumed by both AMO and the Firefox client. Both apps would use the list to display warnings to users about the impact of the add-on.

If after an additional 3 weeks of the add-on being flagged publicly, (again, a straw man) it is not corrected, we should escalate the content of and the and visibility of the warning message.

At AMO, I believe these poorly-performing add-ons should be flagged at the add-on install page. The warning should be firm but friendly -- something like "Mozilla testing has determined that this add-on may cause Firefox performance problems". If, after some period if time from the public warning the add-on is not corrected, the message should be escalated to display in search results and with a text that would more seriously deter users, something like "This add-on is known to cause serious Firefox issues. Use at your own Risk".

In the Firefox client, the flagged add-ons should display warning text in the Add-ons Manager (where informed users, or users following the instructions of a support article or other help, would see it,) and for the escalation period, to an infobar.

This would give add-on authors 3 weeks to fix problems before potential users and some of the installed base are notified, and another 3 weeks before most potential and all existing users would see the more dire warning.

3. Dependencies

Add-on testing capabilities, manual or automated.

An AMO API for "warned add-ons" and for "doubly warned add-ons"

AMO and Firefox code to access this API, get the lists, and display UI based on the lists.

4. Requirements

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Non-goals

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Stage 2: Design

5. Functional specification

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6. User experience design

• Early design mockup: shows percentage of runtime used for each addon.
• [1]: newer mockup of the first stage

Stage 3: Planning

7. Implementation plan

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8. Reviews

Security review

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Privacy review

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Localization review

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Accessibility

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Quality Assurance review

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Operations review

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Stage 4: Development

9. Implementation

1. File AMO bug to expose performance information in the API
2. File AMO bug to make use of the new fields and display warnings when appropriate.
3. File Firefox Add-ons Manager bug to make use of the new fields and display warnings when appropriate.
4. Obtain designs for the Add-ons Manager
5. Implement the designs in the Add-ons Manager.

• bug 597282
• bug 621607
• bug 534020
• bug 659794 Dependency - Expose performance information in the API

Stage 5: Release

10. Landing criteria

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Feature details

Team status notes