Firefox/Planning/2012-03-21

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Planning Meeting Details

• Wednesdays - 11:00am PDT, 18:00 UTC
• Mountain View Offices: Warp Core Conference Room
• Toronto Offices: Finch Conference Room
• irc.mozilla.org #planning for backchannel
• (the developer meeting takes place on Tuesdays)

Video/Teleconference Details - NEW

• 650-903-0800 or 650-215-1282 x92 Conf# 95312 (US/INTL)
• 1-800-707-2533 (pin 369) Conf# 95312 (US)
• Vidyo Room: Warp Core
• Vidyo Guest URL

REMEMBER

These notes are read by people who weren't able to attend the meeting. Please make sure to include links and context so they can be understood.

Actions from Last Week

• More than 20 of you filled out the "How effective is this meeting?" survey, thank you!
  • Mean and Median results for usefulness were 8/10, which is lovely to hear
  • There was also some concrete feedback that I'll think about/work on

Schedule & Progress on Upcoming Releases

Firefox Sync

• New:
• Sync will be supporting Boot2Gecko
  • requires the Desktop client async rewrite, browsierid integration, & sync 2.0
• log4moz will be leaving /services to /toolkit
  • and will get updated and made async as well. \o/
• Bears Repeating:
  • App Sync for App store ('aitc', Apps In The Cloud): In Progress
    • for Marketplace, durable storage for app receipts, Note: sync is not building the client portion, only the server
  • Android Sync : In Progress
    • Only 1 native sync(fennec) per device!
    • Not sure how to file a good android sync bug? http://160.twinql.com/how-to-file-a-good-android-sync-bug
  • Sync 2.0 protocol/Persona(BrowserID) auth integration: In Progress
    • THIS WILL BE A FLAG DAY: clients will not be backwards compatible or interoperable with existing versions
    • representing significant changes on front & back ends
      • current 2.0 draft spec: https://github.com/mozilla-services/docs/blob/master/source/storage/apis-2.0.rst
    • if you know someone maintaining a sync client outside of Firefox Desktop & Android Sync, tell them to talk to :ally asap: 2.0 will break their code

Add-on SDK

Release (1.5 -> Firefox 10, 11)

• Nothing new to report

Stabilization (1.6 -> Firefox 11, 12)

• Pushed Add-on SDK 1.6RC1 yesterday
  • Landed brand new, prettified docs
• Still on track to release 3 April, 2012

Development (1.7 -> Firefox 12, 13)

• On track to merge to Stabilization 3 April, 2012
• Alex Poirot updated his work on l10n for html files in SDK based add-ons
• Irakli blogged about using namespaces in the SDK

Other Add-ons News

• If you missed Jorge's Add-ons Compatibility Report for Firefox 12 - Here's your chance to read it!
• Plans are brewing to clean up the "Developer Hub" section on AMO - hope to have proposal to share soon

Apps

• WebRT Mobile
  • Wrapping up one round of work on Android WebRT using WebKit
  • Scoping effort around Android WebRT using Gecko with mobile team
• WebRT Desktop
  • Days away from landing patches for native app install and launch for FF14
• App submissions live at https://marketplace.mozilla.org/
• Come see what's new in Apps at the weekly Show and Tells Fridays at 12pm PST

Market Insights

Desktop / Platform

Google

• A Google Chrome developer posted a detailed Google+ post about how the team is working embedding a full DNS resolver in Chrome in an effort to improve performance.
• The Google NativeClient team posted some of their presentations at the Game Developers Conference on the web, noting that NaCl "runs C/C++ code in a web page, without plugins." Google is presenting NaCl as part of an overall solution to enable traditional game developers to reach new users on the web. "We like to say that Chrome is the modern gaming browser."
• The V8 Javascript engine team released an updated V8 benchmark, which now includes 2D fluid dynamics simulations. The team notes that Chromium 19 performs 25% better on the benchmark than version 17.
• Chrome, in development builds, now has an experimental Managed Mode API, which will "allows one person to manage the Chrome experience for another person by pre-configuring and then locking a managed User profile."

Microsoft

• Microsoft released more information about "enhanced protected mode" for IE10. Among other changes, instances of Internet Explorer running in the Metro interface will require specific permissions to access different aspects of the operating system, eg the Documents folder, using an extension of the "brokering" system first released with IE8. Networking restrictions will also reduce threats to intranets from malicious internet applications. Currently, Adobe Flash is incompatible with the technology.
• Bloomberg reported that Windows 8 will launch in October.

Opera

• Opera released an updated version of Dragonfly, their web developer tool. It includes mostly UI improvements.

WebOS

• HP launched the openwebosproject.org website, and noted that its Nyx platform portability layer, merged with version 3.3 of the Linux Standard Kernel, had been released.

Marketing, Press & Public Reaction

Press

• New Firefox beta romances developers
  
• Firefox to get new home page and tabs in three months
  
• Mozilla moving towards 'transparent' Firefox versioning
• Mozilla Changes Firefox Video Policy: Native Support For H.264