Firefox/Feature Brainstorming

We are currently in the early development stage for Firefox 3, and would like to collect all the ideas for feature enhancements in a single place. Our goal is to create a single index that lists what sorts of things we're thinking of doing, with links to more detailed ideas about implementation specifics or concerns, and tagets for inclusion in the project.

Note: This is a list of feature enhancement ideas for all future Firefox releases, not just Firefox 3. Firefox 3 will include a subset of the items on this list.

How to use this page

• If you have ideas about features listed here please create a new wiki page off of your user page that outlines your ideas (mockups welcome!) and add a link to that page in the "References" column, or link to existing pages with examples, design thoughts, interesting articles, etc.

• If you have ideas for features not listed here please add them to the most appropriate group below. Include any references to more detailed implementation ideas.

Browser chrome

Browser customization

Specific features	References
File management Improve and expand file management options (ie: "Open with")	n/a
Add-on management Version compatibility Options management Integration with AMO Support for remote extensions (i.e. dev tools package) Allow user to disable plugins via "about:plugins", Options/Prefs, or Extensions Make it easier to find high-quality and reliable add-ons Have "Extension Packs" available for download immediately upon completing a Firefox install (also see "Installer" notes)	- FAQ on forum - Extensions summary on TEM - "Extension Packs" from installer idea - Extension compatibility ideas
Optional IE theme Same size and button positioning Tab opening like IE7 Back/foreward buttons under same dropdown (foreward is rarely used) Go/Reload button occupies same space Menus hidden by default (press alt to show)	n/a
General tasks
Improve extension installation/management UI Unify add-ons management (extensions, themes, search engines, dictionaries, plugins) Improve interaction design around customizing browser interfaces	n/a

Preferences

Specific features	References
List filtering add filtering to the following lists (like the filtering for the Cookies list): Allowed Sites - Popups Exceptions - Images Exceptions - Cookies Allowed Sites - Add-ons Installation Don't Remember Passwords Remember Passwords	n/a
General tasks
n/a	n/a

Tabs, sidebar, and windows

Specific features	References
Tabs Tab drag and detach Window drag and attach as tabs Drag tabs between windows Select on close behavior Tab switching via Mouse Scroll Wheel (on all Platforms) Grouping of tabs (possibly by multiple tab rows) Open tabs one upon the other and/or side by side in a single window Shading of Tabs denoting time since it started (On the scale of white to black, white is more recent than black) Recursive tabs for better tab grouping ("Open in new tab under current tab") Tab expose Option to view tabs in sidebar (with thumbnails) Multiple tabstrips Tab dock Finding tabs Improved UI for finding and reopening any one or more closed tabs (including shortcut key) UI for modifying tab width (f.e. splitter between tabs that can be dragged to change the width of all tabs) Tab opening + closing animation Allow "open in new tab/new window/same window" settings to be set per tab. Allows use of a home page like Google or Yahoo to open links in a new tab, but other tabs links can open in the same tab. Allow opening in new tab for form submits. Allows user to type several consecutive searches into a search box while opening the results in new tabs in the background.	- design thoughts for tabs instead of windows. - Ben Goodger blogs about tabs. - Whether Ctrl+W should not close the app. - Ge.diego made some comments on Ben Godger test build that includes new tab management and gave an alternative user interface mockup proposal - Tab Sidebar extension homepage - Show Safari form results in new tab
Session management Ability to save and restore sessions (tabs, etc.) Implement some method to deal with session sets Make session restore fast and precise (save and restore DOM, or use FastBack data)
Sidebar Sidebar animation	n/a
General tasks
n/a	n/a

Search/Find

Specific features	References
Search plugins Ability to organize search plugins better Ability to remove search engine addons from search box Associate keywords to search plugins Transient assignment of search plugin to search bar	n/a
Search history Browseable search history	n/a
Search bar Integrate browser search with desktop search Multiple searchbars and/or multiple selectable engines for search Default search engine assignment One-click clear searchbar Highlight terms in page from searchbar Spotlight-like functionality Search bar should allow the user to search for a string matching only a whole word. Resizable search box The box may extend as needed or be set to a new static size so users can see more of the searchbar content.	- Search for whole words only
Find Pre-populate ctrl-F with searchbox contents Pre-populate ctrl-F with selected text Tab-modal find bar Find integration points for web applications Improve highlighting behaviour Allow user to configure highlight color Highlight color is chosen to be in contrast to the page background	- Visual feedback on text/link find
General tasks
n/a	n/a

Address bar

Specific features	References
Search When typing in the URL bar, have an option in the auto-complete menu to search for the entered text at the user's choice of Google, Yahoo, Ask.com, etc. Note: this feature already exists in the Mozilla SeaMonkey browser. If the code is compatible it could just be copied.	n/a
Autocomplete middle of word local filenames user's bookmarks using history frequency for relevance Further refinement (and strengthening of match) could be made by offering a list of likely alternatives, selectable via arrow keys in a drop-down menu	- Similar to AppRocket on Windows and Quicksilver for OS X - remarks from bur
General tasks
n/a	n/a

Bookmarks

Specific features	References
Bookmark management Autodetect duplicates Bookmark manager assistance/validation/cleanup Frequently visited links automarking Favicon management Smart bookmark folders Saved searches as smart bookmark folders Category suggest for bookmarks via social web service Virtual bookmark autofile view based upon most likely suggestions from a social web service Remote bookmarks Syncing bookmarks Make it easier to directly add a keyword when saving bookmarks (i.e. you should see a keyword field when you press ctrl+D to bookmark a page) Relevance based filtering Leverage power of DB-based history/bookmarks Auto-linking/smart tagging Preserving DOM state Baysian training/pruning Option to open bookmarks in same tab, new tab, or new window	- On Tagging
In-page bookmarking Easily-accessible, actual book-style bookmarks for long documents, where you can: Preserve your position in the page Move, rather than create new/delete old, the bookmark. This is useful when reading through e.g. the archives of an on-line comic, an e-book, or catching up after vacation on a blog like slashdot, Allow the user to store the full text and images of bookmarked pages, just in case they go away (see discussion about archiving in "History" section)	n/a
Bookmark toolbars Revisit bookmark toolbars Bookmark dock A "bookmark dock" is conceptualized as a bookmark toolbar that allows a user to specify icons instead of text, and that could optionally be placed at the top, left, right, or bottom of the browser window.	n/a
Bookmarks in other parts of browser chrome Let individual bookmarks live on the status and menu bars, and provide UI for putting them there (f.e. support for dragging and dropping bookmarks from the bookmarks sidebar and the bookmarks toolbar to the status and menu bars)	n/a
Page change notification Enable a system where the browser can check if a page has changed, without relying on Web feeds (any bookmark can be "live")	n/a
Bookmarks backend Flexible bookmarks API Smarter handling of bookmarking redirects Ability to bookmark a POST response Ability to bookmark a session (i.e. when bookmarking a single tab, the ability to bookmark the whole session in that tab rather than just the specific page; when bookmarking multiple tabs, the ability to bookmark the sessions in those tabs rather than just the specific pages) Rich-text (i.e. HTML) microsummary bookmarks Live titles extracted from feeds	n/a
General tasks
Completely rework bookmark manager Toolbar enhancements Allow user to move toolbars Investigate the concept of bookmark data mining Improve installation and management of microsummary generators	n/a

History

Specific features	References
History management Ability to add annotations Ability to automatically or manually tag history Ability to automatically or manually archive contents in history in a variety of ways Option to store all text from all pages (possibly excluding https and preset sites) ever visited -- this would let you revisit pages that disappeared off the internet, and also do very good search through history. At 100 pages per day, and a very generous 10k per page (storing text-only, not scripts and images), this would be about a third of a gig annually, so manageable storage requirements by modern standards. Maintain form state in history You fill out a long form, click Submit, and an error occurs. You click Back and sometimes all of your form data is gone. I think it has to do with the page having a short TTL so it is re-requested from the server and re-rendered with a blank form. Allow users to go back through history and see exactly what was entered in the forms on pages. Never save password fields except through existing functionality Allow user to enable/disable feature	- On Tagging
History search Full-text indexing of history Search using metadata / full page text from cache	n/a
History browsing Global history navigation & presentation Session history navigation & presentation (handling iframes & modern DOM tricks)	Thumbnail session history
General tasks
Revisit location bar Better management Search enhancements	n/a

Downloads

Specific features	References
Download control Ability to download all links Ability to download selected links Ability to create download queues so a user can add several links to a queue then fire off a batch download session Fix download resume so it works reliably and as expected Integrate download status into the main browsing window Display UI for each download somewhere in the window (in a sidebar, on a "downloads bar" either at the top or the bottom of the browsing window, etc.) so users can see the progress of their downloads without having to go to a different window Alternately (or perhaps in conjunction), display a single UI element (like an icon or a throbber) that shows the status of the user's downloads (f.e. it might throb to indicate downloads in progress and display a number to indicate the number of downloads still in progress) Schedule downloads Ability to 'Add' file to be downloaded via URL Make many connections (to different or same server) p2p support (locating/participating)	n/a
Download manager Improved file type handling - ie: always download specific filetypes to a set of default or user-specified folders (defaults: Audio, Video, Images, Zipped, Executable, etc.) Make the download manager take multiple download progress listeners so extensions can more easily present downloads in different ways	n/a
General tasks
Download history UI improvements Content-disposition fixes	n/a

Profiles

Specific features	References
Profile creation/switching Improve profile/user management and switching Make the profile manager accessible through the menu	n/a
Profile privacy Password-protected user profiles Encryption of all stored data and profiles	n/a
Profile data Profile export/import Remote profiles hosted on a server and available to multiple installations Full profile sync, including bookmarks, history, passwords, cookies, add-ons, preferences, etc. Encrypted during sync/transmission Preference for where profile data is saved including settings, bookmarks, add-ons, passwords, etc.	n/a
First run of new profile Display EULA (required for distribution opportunities) This is probably not required for distribution opportunities, and is indeed probably a bad idea (reduces usability, no benefit). This is only required for programs having license clauses stronger than copyright law (e.g. no reverse engineering), and not for GPL/MPL/NPL-style licenses.	End-User License Agreement (EULA) Requirements for Firefox 2
General tasks
n/a	n/a

Notification tools

Specific features	References
Page content notification Some sort of unified system for informing users of all the various types of available content on a page, including Web feeds, Microformats, Microsummaries, and what-have-you. How could this information be best communicated to users through the browser? Currently, when a Web feed is detected on a page, a Feed icon is displayed in the Location bar. If a page has multiple content types available, however (web feed, microformat(s), microsummary, etc), putting all those icons in the Location bar may not be feasible. What are the possible alternatives? API and default UI for taking action on a notification (ie: subscribe to feed, import uFormat) see this proposal for a service for exposing metadata Implement a framework for pluggable back-ends for nsIAlertService, to use native desktop notification systems such as Galago, or 3rd party tools such as Growl, Snarl.	n/a
New notification types tab-modal alerts, more file formats, microformats, microsummaries
Omnibus "Status" area download status popup/cookie/XPI blocker status security/trustworthiness status	n/a
Modified page warning Warn User before closing page with modified form	- Form Dirty Bit
Backend changes Get nsIAlertService working for Mac.	n/a
General tasks
Improve error messages and the information they convey Full language pass on error messages	n/a

Printing

Specific features	References
Full page print preview/control Better print preview Print cropping Custom margins (ideally adjustable in print preview) User-controllable print scaling Fully editable document within print preview utilizing simple text editor	n/a
Selective printing Print selected without requiring add-ons "Print image" and "Print page" in context menu	n/a
General tasks
Improve Print UI and handling	n/a

Installer

Specific features	References
Extensions Offer to install extension packs while installing	n/a
Internationalization Improve internationalization support in Installer	n/a
General tasks
n/a	n/a

Software update

Specific features	References
Automatic updates For those who opt out of auto-update, provide a "remind me later" feature Allow users to select type of updates they want (security? feature?) Allow users to revert to previous version Better background downloading support (i.e. background downloads using idle bandwidth, easy on Windows with native pieces, harder elsewhere afaik)	n/a
Manual updates ?	n/a
General tasks
Improve UE for automatic updates so it is less instrusive/shocking Improve UI for updates so it's easier to understand what you will be getting Clean up major/incompat update UI	n/a

Default browser UI

Specific features	References
Alternate UI modes Togglable kiosk mode Minimal UI mode Show and hide navigation/bookmark/menu bar via a right-click menu everywhere	- details & discussion
General tasks
Revist default tabstrip Re-evaluate toolbar buttons Re-evaluate status bar Re-evaluate menus and context menus Ensure shortcut consistency	n/a

Security

Specific features	References
Security preferences Automated user preference auditing with user notification of potentially problematic preference settings.	n/a
Phishing protection Make it easier to report phishing sites Implement a phishing filter that learns automatically Multi-provider support for local list checking (depending upon provider demand)	n/a
Script execution Integrate script execution whitelisting	n/a
Pop-ups Implement one-click viewing of blocked pop-ups Make printing popup windows possible	- More on printing pop-ups
Cookies Add cookie whitelist funcitonality One-click block/allow cookies1 Allow cookies from sites (on request) remain persistant even after the browser has been restarted "Supercookies"	1 Like "CookieCuller"
Extension installation One-click to permanently add site to whitelist One-click to temporarily add site to whitelist for this session Third-party signing and authentication by Mozilla	Extension Blacklisting UI Spec
Virus/Malware protection Integrate virus scanning and malware protection for retrieved content/files Integrated support for 3rd party Anti-virus scanners Firefox to run in a "Protected mode" like IE7/Vista	n/a
Spoofing Employ some shared-secret anti-spoofing techniques1 Prevent content and scripts from being able to spoof or mimic protected chrome SSL auth required for send password This is an optional, but strongly recommended feature suggested during install Sending password with FORM.send or Javascript.Send check if the page is SSL encrypted and will display an error message if there's no valid SSL certificate. Do not allow adding "*" to FORM.edit field from Javascript (avoid spoof) This way a user will get warning when tries to log in to an unsafe service, like phishing sites. All sites with authentication should have valid SSL certificate or should be added to "safe to login" list.2	1 PassPet 2 details & discussion
New technology support Extended Validation Certificate support	n/a
General tasks
Improve user notification of insecure browsing situations Improve handling of digital certificates Improve phishing protection UI Improve overall security UI Improve pop-up blocking UI and options	n/a

Privacy

Specific features	References
Private browsing Implement a "private browsing" mode that prevents collection and recording of data
Privacy preferences Add the option to suppress referrer information while browsing Password Protection for all Private Data password protect browser and form history1, cookies, and all private data could use same master password as password manager	1 bug 285790 already exists for form history
Password management Improve password management (like opera, also see Myk's post) Ability to edit saved usernames and their respective passwords via the Privacy > Passwords > View Saved Passwords dialog
General tasks
Improve overall Privacy UI Improve "clear private data" UI and options	n/a

Identity

Specific features	References
Identity management Add identity management Ability to fill in common form fields using 1..n identities Enable some sort of single sign-on capability	Identity 2.0 at OSCON
New technology support Support for Microsoft's CardSpace (nee: InfoCard) protocol Support for SXIP protocol Support for OpenID	n/a
General tasks
n/a	n/a

Feeds and Microformat handling

Specific features	References
Web feeds Mark entries as read Notification of feed update Set refresh rates per feed Set expiry options per feed Set notification options per feed Show # unread items in a feed Enhanced Feed Preview rendering Build Home Page from subscribed feeds Show feed entry summaries & content Remember 1..n system feed readers Enable a "River of News" feed viewing option	- On Web Feeds - TechCrunch article about IE7
Microformats and other web data Automatically harvesting web data like mailto: link addresses, atom/RSS feed links, dates + events, other info…? Web data manager for browsing/searching/using auto-harvested data and microformats Web data preferences - What would be nice is a rules interface for web content similar to mail. "if any of the following conditions are met, perform the following actions..." So for example, if hcards are detected within % mozilla.com AND they're LIKE %@mozilla.com, add to address book, etc.	- Piggy Bank
General tasks
n/a	n/a

Content filtering, manipulation, and control

Specific features	References
Content filtering Ability to filter ads Also, block links around ads. The whole pages shouldn't be a danger zone -- if I click somewhere blank on a web page to give my browser focus, I shouldn't be taken to the advertiser's web site. Ability to filter Flash movies Ability to filter plugin content generally (Flash movies, Java applets; basically anything included in the page via an object, applet, or embed element) Ability to filter content which is positioned outside of the normal flow (i.e. where the CSS "position" property is set to "absolute", "fixed", or possibly "relative"), so users can filter CSS-based popups Ability to filter content generally (f.e. a interface that enables users to select and persistently hide portions of a page) All filtering should enable one-click to view blocked Should be very easy to add items to white/blacklists Better control over image blocking (f.e. a small button that appears in the corners of images you hover over which invokes the "block images from this server" operation when pressed) Volume/Mute for any audio content Ability to set a charset for a site Text-only mode You have the option to switch a tab between "Text Only" and "Graphical" modes, with faster downloads/rendering if browsing in text only mode	- Flashblock remarks from bur - A couple things from Max.e - Text Only Mode
Content filtering preferences Ability to set persistent global, per-site, and per-page preferences We might create a "web control" panel/sidebar that displays common preferences such as font size and charset We should make such a panel extensible, so extensions can add additional controls to it	n/a
Content manipulation Option to show an icon next to (and/or in the status bar) hyperlinks which open in a new window/tab (e.g. the icon next to external links on Wikipedia, etc).	n/a
Forms Ability to resize textareas	n/a
Parental control features Implement a set of parental control features	n/a
General tasks
n/a	n/a

Compatibility

Web standards compatibility

Specific features	References
ACID 2 test Make sure Firefox passes it	n/a
Content-editable Add support for content-editable	n/a
General tasks
Improve overall standards support	n/a

Protocol and media support

Specific features	References
Improvements Improve PDF support and handling (including the ability to save pages as PDF) Improve Java support Improve FTP support	n/a
New technology support Open Document Format BitTorrent OGG1 XBEL Jabber/XMPP SIP IPTV IM Integrated radio livestream WMV Microformat detection/notification with metadata Scriptable ZeroConf (Bonjour/Rendezvous) OBEX (Bluetooth, etc) SyncML SVG via img tag JPEG2000 ANG MNG	1 Firefox Ogg Support
General tasks
n/a	n/a

Global community

Internationalization

Specific features	References
Language support Improve complex glyph rendering Support more complex languages (Hebrew, Arabic, pangool, all Indian dialects)	n/a
General tasks
n/a	n/a

Accessibility

Specific features	References
Zooming Add smooth zooming Implement full page zoom, including images (sub: have browser optionally store this setting per-page, per-site, or globally) Zooming, panning, scaling for images Add "Fit to width" option (like Opera) Implement user-definable zoom levels Make zoom levels settable preferences per page, per site, or globally Menu entries for them in the view menu in a possible page zoom submenu and text zoom submenu Also putting this in Tools > Options > Content > Page Zoom % and Text Zoom %	n/a
Scrolling Add smooth scrolling	n/a
Accesskeys Ensure there are no conflicts between web page and browser shortcuts Implement some method to view AccessKeys for the current page	- AccessKeys_solution
General tasks
Simplify process for creating accessible themes (dev? docs?)	n/a

Developer-facing elements

Developer-facing UI

Specific features	References
Developer tools Unified DOM/JS debugger with advanced logging Live HTTPHeaders Web developer toolbar AJAXy stuff etc. (What does this mean?)	n/a
General tasks
Create a "unified set of modern web developer tools"	n/a

Add-ons/Platform development

Specific features	References
Extensions Make it easier to write extensions (new sandbox for extensions, extension platform?) Provide a simpler API for functionality extensions commonly use, including: accessing preferences filesystem operations (f.e. rginda's file utils library) observing onLocationChange (i.e. getting notified whenever the page changes) Provide support for hierarchical extension dependencies Extension preferences export, soft of like an OPML for extensions that can get slurped in to another FF seat	n/a
APIs Add a metadata handler extension API
General tasks
Improve RDF support, or develop a better general-purpose data model Improve support for multithreading Implement more consistent data types ("Instead of JS + variant, mozStorage, RDF, etc. have universal data types (string, integer, decimal, date, blob) that are used everywhere") Improve support for advanced UI features like notification icons, alert bubbles, shell integration	n/a

Performance

Specific features	References
n/a	n/a
General tasks
n/a	n/a

Mobile and Enterprise support

Mobile device integration/support

Specific features	References
Send content to device Bluetooth support	n/a
General tasks
n/a	n/a

Enterprise deployment

Specific features	References
Support w32 Group Policies Allowed extensions Basic customizations (eg. company homepage) Requires that controls become disabled if overridden by policy. Use the normal Windows UI for editing the policy itself. See bug 267888.	n/a
General tasks
n/a	n/a

User support and Testing

Help documentation

Specific features	References
In-browser Integrate in-product help and first-run/updated pages with online help.	n/a
Website Move the majority of Firefox Help online, except for a minimal set of "in-product" help pages. This online help system should include the ability for community to post comments, corrections, updates, etc. Integrate instant IM chat and newsgroup search with help	n/a
Intro/Tutorial mode host it on mozilla.com as movies have some UI hooks in the product	- thoughts from FunnyMan3595
General tasks
n/a	n/a

User-testing

Specific features	References
User testing extensions Create extension to allow for remote user testing	n/a
Development build UI changes Add "send feedback" buttons to dialogs in development builds	n/a
General tasks
n/a	n/a

Other resources

• Gecko 1.9 Feature List