These Weeks in Firefox: Issue 95

Headlines

• Firefox 89 released this week! This version includes a major UI redesign and thoughtful touches throughout. See the release notes here.
• We launched ideas.mozilla.org, a new platform for the Mozilla community to share their feedback and ideas. While technical feedback and bug reports should still go to Bugzilla, please post product feedback and new feature recommendations to ideas.mozilla.org. Product managers, engineers, and designers will be engaging with the community there to refine and prioritize the suggestions!
• Fission is now rolled out to ~50% of Nightly users. For those who don’t yet have it, you can opt-in to using Fission on Nightly, Beta or Release channels by setting `fission.autostart` to `true` followed by a Firefox restart. You will start to see a [F] in the tab hover that confirms that Fission is turned on.
• We released Total Cookie Protection in private browsing mode in Firefox 89.

Friends of the Firefox team

For contributions from May 19 to June 1 2021, inclusive.

Introductions/Shout-Outs

Resolved bugs (excluding employees)

• Geoff Lankow extracted uses of gBrowser in PrintUtils in a way that can be easily overridden
• Sarah Ukoha fixed a bug with opening PDF files when set to save automatically
• Danilo B removed obsolete checks and references related to wyciwyg protocol
• Andreu Botella updated the WebExtensions’ multipart/form-data parser to match Chrome
• Petr Sumbera added missing ScopeExit header
• kaira fixed alignment of numbers on Import Summary Page in about:logins

Fixed more than one bug

• 🌟 Ava Katushka moved recording new download to telemetry from DownloadsCommon to DownloadsList for more accurate download count and created pref for downloads panel improvements
• Michelle Goossens removed browser.proton.enabled checks/setters from tests, removed checks for protonAppMenuEnabled or protonToolbarEnabled smart pref getters from tests, removed gProtonDoorhangers, gProtonDoorhangersEnabled,  gProtonAppMenuEnabled from various jsms and other frontend (non-test) code, removed -proton from pageActions-proton and browser-proton directory names, removed checks for gProton and gProtonDoorhangers smart pref getters from tests, and disabled browser_accessibility_context_menu_inspector.js on OS X 10.15

New contributors (🌟 = first patch)

• 🌟 Calum Smith changed Reader Mode so we don’t override <ol>s’ list-style-type in reader mode
• 🌟 jha.ashray12 fixed size of links in CSV import dialog and report
• 🌟 siddhant disabled saving to file when screenshot to clipboard is enabled. Updated inspector and developer tools toolbar

Project Updates

Add-ons / Web Extensions

Addon Manager & about:addons

• Fixed a small bug in about:addons that was mistakenly allowing a user to remove an extension locked by an enterprise policy – Bug 1658768

WebExtensions Framework

• Bug 1709687 – NotFoundError: Could not open the file webext.sc.lz4
  • Barret landed a fix to avoid some log spam introduced by the changes originally landed as part of Bug 1649593
• The id of the extension that is redirecting an intercepted webRequest is now being stored into the channel properties bag (as we are already doing for the extension id that is blocking an intercepted webRequest) – Bug 1711924
  • The devtools are not currently using this new property set on the channel, and so it is not going to be visible anywhere in the UI at the moment, we will be filing a follow up to track it as a possible addition to the DevTools network panel.
• Gijs fixed a bug that was making Firefox to show the “external protocol permission prompt” when an url for an WebExtension-controlled protocol handler was passed on the command line – Bug 1700976 (originally regressed in Firefox 88 from Bug 1678255)

WebExtension APIs

• In Firefox 89, the webRequest multipart/form-data parser has been updated to better match the spec (as well as how this API behaves in Chrome) – Bug 1697292

Developer Tools

• Font preview for HTTP font requests (bug, contributed by Sebastian Zartner, :sebo)

 

• Supporting private fields in DevTools (bug)

 

• Fission
  • Targeting Fission M8 – reaching feature parity with pre-Fision state. Also focusing on issues related to BFCache changes (changes behind a pref now, but will be enabled in Nightly soon – check: fission.bfcacheInParent)

Fission

• Fission team is fixing the last couple of test failures with the new BFCache in parent process architecture. It is now ready for your testing and experience. Users can set `fission.bfcacheInParent` pref to `true` followed by a Firefox restart to enable this.
• Please file any Fission bugs you encounter using this template.

macOS Spotlight

• Work continues on supporting native fullscreen. See bug 1631735. Try the behaviour early by enabling full-screen-api.macos-native-full-screen.
• Work continues on improved dark mode support. See bug 1623686. Try the behaviour early by enabling widget.macos.respect-system-appearance.
• Fixed a bug where context menus would sometimes not appear on a two-finger click: bug 1710474.
• Preliminary work to improve high contrast mode on Mac: Bug 1711261 – Address bar and Search bar lack contrast in OSX High Contrast mode.
• Preliminary work on reducing power consumption when watching videos.

Messaging System

• Updated both about:welcome and upgrade dialog for macOS pinning and from pinning experiment learnings to ask pin then default
• Better support local dynamic about:welcome behaviors, e.g., app is pinned or has return-to-AMO attribution, already default, with remote experiment configuration
• More polishing of onboarding, e.g., updated noodle colors to match marketing, hover effect for Arabic “sign in,” better font-size scaling for narrow windows

New Tab Page

• Work continues on remaining proton redesign work. Meta: Bug 1707989.
  • Continuing to file bugs about this work that include some front-end good first bugs. (:amy is happy to mentor bugs)
• Bug 1712297 Pinned topsites search shortcuts left hanging when @search_engine gets removed. Fix landed including tests. Thank you :standard8, :aflorinescu & :dao!

Password Manager

• :dimi updated the heuristics model for determining if there’s a new password field on a page so that the password manager more accurately offers password generation on register pages.
• Tim :tgiles is finishing up improving the password generation experience for many sites.
• Thanks to the following two contributors for their help!
  • Kaira (anshukaira) fixed an alignment issue in the Login CSV import report page.
  • Ashray (jha.ashray12) fixed some links being too large in the Login CSV import report page.

Performance

• Doug and Florian have worked on improving our BHR (Background Hang Reporter) data and visualizing that data
  • Dashboard link
• Doug’s been working on recording JS stacks for late write reports to help stop us writing to disk during shutdown, removing jank caused by session restore, and improving mouse event IPC
• Florian has fixed a number of issues with about:processes.
• Emma has made a number of fixes to IO during the startup path to stop relying on OS.File

Performance Tools

• You can now filter markers by their category in the marker chart and marker table.
• No periodic sampling mode now collects thread CPU usage as well. Previously this section was blank. Example profile.

• When importing a Linux perf profile into Firefox Profiler, the timeline will look better with less wasted empty space. Example profile.

• Made various improvements on the activity graph in the timeline. It’s more accurate now.

Privacy/Security

• Updating site data clearing to also clear storage partitioned by Total Cookie Protection – Bug 1646215
  • Rather than clearing per host, we will clear by “Cookie Jar” (by eTLD+1)
  • We’re teaching all the storage cleaner implementations how to do that – Bug 1705032, Bug 1705033, Bug 1705035, Bug 1709621

Search and Navigation

• Drew added new nontechnical address bar overview to source tree documentation, also explaining results composition
• Drew continues to work on the next Firefox Suggest experiment
• Daisuke fixed deduplication of search suggestions with the experimental unit conversion address bar provider (browser.urlbar.unitConversion.enabled) – Bug 1711156
• Daisuke fixed spacing of search shortcut buttons – Bug 1710651
• Harry fixed the reader view button tooltip – Bug 1712569

Screenshots

• Kajal Sah started her outreachy internship last week!
• Kajal is working on a patch to add the screenshot button to the context menu for iframes

Downloads Panel

• Outreachy intern, Ava Katushka, started with us last week! She’ll be helping us implement fixes and features in the Downloads Panel to make the downloading experience smoother:
  • See meta bug to follow along
  • Work will be behind a pref: browser.download.improvements_to_download_panel (bug 1710929)
• Ava fixed an issue where downloads telemetry was inflated (bug 1706355).
• Ava is working on a change where if a user chooses to open a file with a computer application, it’s saved to the Downloads folder (bug 1710933).