Categories: News

These Weeks in Firefox: Issue 35

Highlights

Activity Stream

“Custom Image URL” is new!

  • The doorhanger for an extension-controlled homepage now links to a SUMO article, and the doorhanger for an extension-controlled New Tab page now shows the extension name.

No more “wait, which extension was that again?”

Graph showing drop in median (35ms to 2.5ms) and mean (60ms to 20ms) switch time

Median down from 35ms to 2.5ms, mean down from 60ms to 20ms.

  • We’ve released Facebook Container, a WebExtension that makes it easier for you to keep all of your Facebook activity in a single container. See the blog post for details on how this helps you preserve your privacy!
  • Voice Fill & Snooze Tabs Test Pilot experiments are being graduated to AMO! Min Vid is going to be turned into a SHIELD experiment.

Friends of the Firefox team

Project Updates

Add-ons

  • Listeners to the tabs.onUpdated event may now supply a filter to avoid overhead for unwanted events.
  • A bug that caused tab IDs to change when tabs were moved between windows was fixed.
  • A few bugs in the bookmarks API were fixed.
  • Page actions are now much more efficient.  Some other bugs with page actions and browser actions were also fixed.
  • There is now a preference that requires language packs to be signed (which currently defaults to false, but will eventually be switched to true).
  • Kris removed some old code related to legacy extensions (bootstrap.js, we’re coming for you soon).
  • Zhengyi implemented theming the toolbar inputs focused background, text and border.

Activity Stream

Screenshot of Activity Stream dark theme spec

A work-in-progress UX spec…shiny!

Browser Architecture

Lint

Policy Engine

Performance

Graph showing drop in mean time to first paint from 4.3s to 2.5s

Mean time to first paint dropped from 4.3s to 2.5s

Privacy/Security

Search and Navigation

Address Bar & Search

Places

More

Sync / Firefox Accounts

Test Pilot

  • Work continues on Firefox Accounts integration for Screenshots, as well as a Chrome WebExtension, Telemetry-based engagement dashboard, and many minor bug fixes.

Web Payments

  • Reviewed user research on our current flow, “unhappy path” user testing
  • Continuing to land UI in Nightly as we build out the payment flow, behind the dom.payments.request.enabled pref.

Below the fold

  • (Osmose) We have a working prototype collecting browser chrome JS errors on the Nightly channel (tracking bug 1426479). We’re evaluating if collecting these errors is useful enough to do on a permanent basis, but we need your help in using the data to find/fix bugs! If you’re interested, see the wiki page for instructions on how to get access (limited to employees only for now).
  • [mconley] We collect hang reports on pre-release channels using BHR. That information is available at arewesmoothyet.com, which you should use. Search for main thread hangs involving your scripts!
    • dthayer is working on improving the performance of arewesmoothyet.com. I can confirm that the irony is not lost on him.
  • florian has combined the infrastructure for our performance tests so that we can test for flickering and reflows at the same time. This should make it easier to write performance tests, since test writers will mostly have to worry about scripting the actions to be tested. And this has significantly expanded our flicker test coverage.

4 comments on “These Weeks in Firefox: Issue 35”

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  1. Robert Ab wrote on

    Is any chance that work on Bug 1413525 will start soon? It would be really great if you could assign engineer to work on this bug.
    This single bug (Bug 1413525) (as well as Bug 1378647) are very important for session managers (Session Manager, Tab Mix Plus, Tab Session Manager, MySessions, and maybe Session Buddy in the future) and its users (approx. 1 mln).
    Also other bugs probably will be not needed if Bug 1413525 (and maybe Bug 1378647) will be solved.

    Bug 1413525’s priority/severity is set to P5 enhancement, but this bug is the most important one blocking Bug 1427928 (meta-bug for session managers) which is set to P3 enhancement.
    As you can see >200 users has already voted on Bug 1413525 and on four other session manager-related bugs, including Bug 1378647 and Bug 1427928 (meta-bug).

    Reply

    1. Robert Ab wrote on

      https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1427928
      https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1413525
      https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1378647

      Reply

  2. BelFox wrote on

    I love reading this Nightly News. Keep up the good work!

    Request: please start working on a Toolbar API (see bug 1215064). It will allow legacy add-ons and its users to migrate to Firefox Quantum. For example, I’m sorely missing an add-on like Download Status Bar. Thank you!

    Reply

  3. Christina wrote on

    On my FireFox Nightly android… I would switch if I could easily find help in doing so without losing anything so I could pick up right where I left off.
    I have Firefox Nightly on my Windows 10 Fall creators update laptop… as well as on my android. But on my android it is the Firefox nightly old id… the Firefox nightly android is from before Firefox Nightly android was on the Google play store… and now it would be great if there way help in moving all of your stuff and your crash reports so you can pick up right where you left off. So you don’t have to start over again just because… you and now have to move to the Firefox Nightly that is from the Google play store to keep getting updates.

    Reply

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