These Weeks in Firefox: Issue 94

Highlights

• On macOS, scrollbars now squish during rubber-banding.
• We’re working on supporting native fullscreen on macOS. Turn it on by enabling the pref full-screen-api.macos-native-full-screen. This will (among other things) create new fullscreen Spaces for videos. You could, for example, put a fullscreen YouTube video in native Split Screen next to another application.
• We’re also working on enhanced dark mode support for macOS (Bug 1623686). Enable this by turning on the pref widget.macos.respect-system-appearance. Recent fixes include a dark library window (Bug 1698763), dark page info dialog (Bug 1698754), and a dark “Clear Recent History” window (Bug 1710269).
• We’ve announced the deprecation of the canvas drawWindow WebExtension method, due to incompatibility with the Fission architecture:
  • We should now be using tabs.captureTab.
• about:welcome got major updates for Firefox 89. This includes new animations, icons, and accessibility improvements.

Friends of the Firefox team

For contributions from May 4 to May 18 2021, inclusive.

Resolved bugs (excluding employees)

New contributors (🌟 = first patch)

• 🌟 Alej0hio2007 helped retheme Reader Mode to fit in with the recent refresh!
• Ava Katushka fixed a bug where ongoing downloads would be accidentally cancelled and deleted when clearing the downloads list in the Library
• 🌟 Gagah Pangeran Rosfatiputra fixed a dark theme icon glitch with one of our DevTools infobars
• Manuel Carretero tightened up some click targets in the DevTools settings pane
• Ryedu.09 fixed the alignment of a “Learn more” link in about:preferences
• 🌟 Silke Hofmann cleaned up how we import JSM’s in the Enterprise Policy Engine code

Project Updates

Add-ons / Web Extensions

Addon Manager & about:addons

• Landed some more styling tweaks for making sure about:addons does better match the new Proton UI conventions: Bug 1709464 and Bug 1709655

WebExtensions Framework

• More Fission-related changes landed in Firefox 90: Bug 1708238
• Work related to the “manifest_version 3”: Support for new web_accessible_resources manifest property formats – Bug 1696580, Bug 1697334

WebExtension APIs

• Starting from Firefox 90, Extensions will be allowed to use the Cache web API from extension pages to cache HTTP resources (caching an HTTP URL using the Cache web API will be still enforcing the extensions host permissions, as it would if the extension would be fetching from the same URLs using fetch or XHR) – Bug 1575625 and Bug 1710138
  • Thanks to André Natal for contributing this change as part of his work on the Project Bergamot extension

Fission

• mccr8 enabled the Process Priority Manager for subframes
• pbone landed some GC scheduling tweaks to make it less likely that closing many tabs all at once will result in long GC pauses

Lint and Docs

• Silke did a patch to stop using the second argument to ChromeUtils.import when importing EnterprisePolicies.jsm.
  • This is part of a set of bugs to finish enabling the mozilla/reject-chromeutils-import-params ESLint rule everywhere which will aid potentially switching the module system to es6 modules in future.

macOS Spotlight

• Native context menus landed in Firefox 89! This closes the 21-year-old bug 34572.
  • We also fixed a number of follow-up issues, like supporting dark mode context menus on macOS 10.14+.

Messaging System

• about:welcome improvements: accessibility, design, experiments, localization, talos
• Animations/transitions added to about:welcome proton designs (dialog, noodles, text)
  • video: https://bug1698204.bmoattachments.org/attachment.cgi?id=9220207
• Tightened up upgrade dialog whitespace to better fit shorter screens

New Tab Page

• Accessibility bug fixes for the “personalize” drawer allowing it to operate better with screen readers (Bug 1707022) Thanks to :eeejay for the patches! Also a fix for high contrast mode (Bug 1708248) thanks to :morgan and :thecount
• Snippets has been disabled in Firefox 89 (Bug 1709984)

Performance

• dthayer has a patch up for review to reduce the UI freezes caused by sending SessionStore data to the SessionFile worker.
• mconley would like to experiment with the about:home startup cache using Nimbus, and is considering having the startup cache enabled in MR1.1.
• mconley fixed Bug 1703494 – Remove sync layout flush for hamburger menu opening with proton
• emalysz landed a patch to provide async support for promise workers, and removed OS.File from PageThumbs.jsm. Only 3 callers of OS.File left during startup!
• Several BHR improvements:
  • Improved dashboard:
    • It’s possible to navigate to the data of previous days, and to link to a specific day.
    • For hangs with an associated bug, the whiteboard annotation is shown in the top right
    • when using the filter box, the filtered word is highlighted in the stack on the right side.
  • Better data:
    • (chrome) JS function names are now included in BHR stacks.
    • these label frames are now visible: “ChromeUtils::Import”, “mozJSSubScriptLoader::DoLoadSubScriptWithOptions”, “nsThreadManager::SpinEventLoop”, “Category observer notification”, “Services_Resolve”, “Task”
  • Doug is working on showing annotations (eg. “UserInteracting”, “browser.tabs.opening”) in the dashboard

Performance Tools

• Profiler buffer memory is no longer counted in the profiler memory tracks, making it possible to see small memory use variations.
• New label frames for XPIDL method/getter/setter calls (similar to what we already had for WebIDL)

Proton / MR1

• AppMenu / Library
  • Minor bugfixes.
• Panels
  • Updated Protections Panel to use the same subview navigation arrow icons as everywhere else
  • Fixed an issue where the input colour in Dark Theme wasn’t 100% correct. Originally filed for Bookmarks Panel, but affects password panel and findbar as well.
  • Protections Panel Milestone icon dimensions are now enforced
  • The spacing in the Bookmarks Panel was improved to avoid overlapping the label with focus rings
  • The Pocket Panel now uses system fonts and em units
• Context menus
  • Disabled hover styles for the Windows 10 context menu
  • RTL support for native macOS menus
• Modals
  • 2 changes to modal backgrounds in dark mode (2), which were uplifted to 89
  • HCM improvements
  • Dialog sizing improvements
• Infobars
  • The Buttons on modals do not change their state on hover or Button press when the High contrast mode is enabled
• Onboarding
  • Changed from 2-screen to 3-screen flow

Search and Navigation

• Daisuke fixed a bug on Linux where opening new tabs by middle clicking the tabs bar could paste clipboard contents into the urlbar. Bug 1710289
• Daisuke also fixed a bug where pasting a string ending with a combination of CR, LF may drop the search terms. Bug 1709971
• Marco landed a patch improving the tooltips and accessible text when adding new OpenSearch engines – Bug 1706334
• Mark fixed a bug in the separate search bar, where certain characters could be shown encoded in the results panel – Bug 1529220

Screenshots

• Screenshots now factors in Firefox zoom values
• We’ve accepted an Outreachy intern who will start next week!