These Weeks in Firefox: Issue 97

Highlights

• Background updater has started rolling out on Release!
  • This means users on Windows with Firefox installed that haven’t opened it in a while will get the latest Firefox when they start it!
• The WebExtensions team has landed more work related to supporting Manifest Version 3:
  • The team landed some more changes related to the Extensions background service workers – Bug 1638097, Bug 1638099 (part of the ongoing work related to the Manifest Version 3 WebExtensions)
  • introduced support for the host_permissions manifest.json key – Bug 1693385
• Some great accessibility fixes have recently landed:
  • Morgan (from the Accessibility Team) fixed a problem with macOS VoiceOver not properly announcing switch-to-tab results – Bug 1716828
  • Harry fixed the appearance of the address and search bars in High Contrast mode on macOS –  Bug 1711261

Friends of the Firefox team

For contributions from July 13th to July 27th 2021, inclusive.

Introductions/Shout-Outs

Resolved bugs (excluding employees)

Fixed more than one bug

• Jonas Jenwald [:Snuffleupagus]
• Kajal Sah
• karim

New contributors (🌟 = first patch)

• Antonin Loubiere fixed an issue where a manually closed tab would be restored on session restore.
• ⭐️ Karim made some major improvements to our WebExtension APIs: an extension can now access url, title and faviconUrl when the extension has the required host permissions, without requesting the broader “tabs” permission. Also, the downloads API now supports downloading with cookies from a given container. He also fixed an intermittent failure in test_ext_downloads_cookieStoreId.js.
• Claudia Batista added an evaluation result message when using the DevTools “copy” helper.
• Hardik Sharma replaced waitForCondition use in customizableui tests with TestUtils.waitForCondition.
• ⭐️ Hexiang Cui fixed the output of the “Copy as cURL” option in the DevTools Network panel.

Project Updates

Add-ons / Web Extensions

WebExtensions Framework

• Fixed an issue that was preventing an extension content script to successfully create websockets on webpages using a upgrade-insecure-requests CSP directive  – Bug 1676024
• Prevent QuotaManager from selecting extension origins as least active origins to evict data when the free disk space is below certain thresholds – Bug 1720487 (landed in Nightly 92 and uplifted to Beta 91)

WebExtension APIs

• Starting from Firefox 92, an extension will be able to access url, title and faviconUrl when the extension does have the required host permissions (and without requesting the broader “tabs” permission) – Bug 1690613. Thanks Karim for contributing this enhancement.
• Also in Firefox >= 92, the downloads API support downloading with cookies from a given container (as well as searching and erase downloads by cookieStoreId) – Bug 1669566. Thanks again to Karim for contributing this additional enhancement!

Downloads Panel

• Ava is exploring how we can detect potential download spam triggered by websites and providing some sort of UX for users to either “allow” or “block” these download requests (Bug 1711049)

Fission

• The Fission team is working on a “process count experiment” to try increasing the number of content processes per site
• The Fission team is also working on launching a “tab unloader experiment” to try unloading background tabs that haven’t been used in the while (and aren’t running audio, video or WebRTC, and other heuristics) to reclaim memory and processing power

Form Autofill

• The password manager team (:tgiles, :dimi) are starting to own this component
• There is no current module owner or peers as we’re building up our expertise with this component
• The plan for H2 2021 is to support credit card saving for GeckoView/Fenix and enable credit card autofill in the UK, France, and Germany
  • Enabling credit card autofill in these countries involves using Fathom to recognize credit card fields and fixing this list of country specific bugs

Installer & Updater

• We’re creating an MSIX package for Firefox.

macOS Spotlight

• Improved dark mode support landed in Release 91!
• A fix will land soon for an issue where the window stoplight buttons were positioned incorrectly in RTL locales (bug 1419375).
• Work continues on reducing video power usage and improving memory pressure notifications.

Search and Navigation

• Harry changed the new tab page search bar hand-off to enter Search Mode when the address bar would not usually execute a search, or return search suggestions – Bug 1713827

Screenshots

• Kajal has landed patches that create the foundation for the browser component switch
• Kajal also migrated the existing icons into the new folder
• Sfoster and Kajal have been working on creating a tab dialog overlay and actors to push the project into the next stage, and prototyping the overlay.