These Weeks in Firefox: Issue 32

Highlights

• The WebExtension theme API now supports specifying colors for frame_inactive, tab_loading, icons and icons_attention, button_background, button_background_hover and button_background_active, toolbar_field_separator.
• We’re experimenting with “early blank first paint” to improve perceived start-up performance
  • The goal here is to paint an empty (about:blank) window as early as possible during startup. On slow computers this should let the user know that Firefox is starting and clicking the icon again isn’t needed. On faster computers it should improve the perception of startup performance.
  • This landed pref’ed off last week and is available for testing in Nightlies. Feedback welcome, the pref to flip in about:config is browser.startup.blankWindow
• The All Bookmarks folder in the Library and the Star panel is now generated differently under-the-hood. If you notice bugs when organizing bookmarks, please file a bug.
• Web Authentication on by default and shipping on Desktop in 60. [Hacks Post] [Deutsch]
• We have reduced the precision of timers and clocks to 2ms to make attacks like Spectre more difficult. Nightly today, Beta next week. Ping tjr or file a bug if you see weird behavior.
• Dao has replaced the default “globe” favicon with a spiffy new Photon one.

• 

  Spiffy new globe!

Friends of the Firefox team

(Give a shoutout/thanks to people for helping fix and test bugs. Introductions)

• Resolved bugs (excluding employees): https://mzl.la/2o14xUY
  • More than one bug fixed:
    • Ian Moody [:Kwan] (UTC+0)
    • Jeremy Lempereur
    • Michael Kohler [:mkohler]
    • Tim Nguyen :ntim
    • hemant
  • New contributors (🌟 = First Patch!)
    • 🌟 Nathan Watson got rid of some unneeded PlacesTestUtils code
    • 🌟 Bogdan Pozderca [:bogdan] implemented the frame_inactive property for the WebExtension theme-ing API
    • 🌟 joseph.fergusson added Preferences spotlight support for the Form Autofill doorhanger during first-time use
    • 🌟 Zhengyi Lian made it possible to theme the tab loading indicator colour for the WebExtension theme-ing API
    • 🌟 George Dan renamed ProfileStorage.jsm to FormAutofillStorage.jsm to make its purpose more clear
    • 🌟 Dylan Stokes [:dyl] added support for changing toolbar button colours for the WebExtension theme-ing API
    • 🌟 Vivek added support for Google Chrome toolbar button color properties in the webextension themes
    • 🌟 Ashish Daulatabad helped sort out some of our ancient OSHelperAppService code
    • 🌟 Venkatesh Prabhu :vprabhu fixed a cursor glitch in about:telemetry

Project Updates

Add-ons

• The runAt option to contentScripts.register now defaults to document_idle.
• The key combination to open a WebExtension sidebar is now shown in the switcher dropdown and the sidebar menu.
• Disabled pageActions no longer show a context menu item.
• Improved the memory consumption of extensions which use tabs.insertCSS significantly.
• DOMNodes and cyclic objects can now be rendered with the sidebar.setExpression API method.
• The commands API now supports an update and a reset method to dynamically change commands.
• about:preferences now shows when an extension is controlling proxy preferences.

Activity Stream

• Landed React 16, which unlocks better bad state telemetry
• Landed responsive version of Activity Stream to take advantage of wider screens

  • 

    Ooooooo responsive design

Performance

• Tab warming
  • Did you know that there’s now documentation for the async tab switcher? If you’ve ever been curious about how that thing works, check it out.
  • Patch to fix short-spinners landed and bounced. Working on re-landing.
  • Patch to enable warming by default on Nightly is ready to land once the above bug is fixed.
• paolo has been working on making our panel code properly async
• Gijs has been driving add-ons / plug-ins blocklist work

Privacy/Security

• Preloading Strict Transport Security for entire top-level domains (via the hstspreload.org list) is in 59.
• We are now restricting AppCache to HTTPS.

Search and Navigation

Address Bar & Search

• Florian has delayed creation of the autocomplete search components until the user starts searching, this includes the Address Bar (startup perf)
• Paolo has made the search bar use the richlistbox autocomplete (same binding as the Address Bar)
• Yuri Khan added an about:config pref to always open Address Bar results in a new tab
• Dao has grouped the “Show search suggestions ahead of history in address bar” checkbox with the other Search Suggestions checkboxes in Preferences

Places

• Thanks to the legacy transactions removal, PlacesUtils is now a lazy getter in placesOverlay.xul, an overlay included by every Window (startup perf)
• Removed more legacy APIs:
  • SetItemIndex, GetItemIndex, GetItemDateAdded and SetItemDateAdded, GetItemLastModified, setPostDataForBookmark and getPostDataForBookmark
  • Nathan Watson removed PlacesTestUtils.clearHistory() (use PlacesUtils.history.clear() instead)
  • The bookmark-observers & history-observers categories have been removed (use places-init-complete instead)
• Kit simplified Syncing of the bookmark roots details
• Doug Thayer is working on an experimental new Places notifications system that should largely improve perf of history and bookmarks operations

More

• Killed the nsIBrowserGlue idl interface

Sync / Firefox Accounts

• The Sync team is working with the Push and iOS teams to improve the Send Tab experience on mobile. 📲
• Ed fixed a deadlock caused by simultaneous push notifications for sent tabs, and a regression in tracking tab sends. 🔓
• Thom enabled password validation on Nightly 🔑, and added a record editor to About Sync ✏️.
• More progress toward enabling new bookmark sync by default. 📚 We’d like to fix a storage thread hang before encouraging everyone to dogfood.

Web Payments

• Landed New WebPayments components
  • List items UI
  • Shipping Address Picker
  • Payment Card selector
  • Shipping Option selector