These Weeks in Firefox: Issue 107

Highlights

• DevTools now supports an “auto” theme (now the default). It follows the browser’s color scheme, so if you have a dark theme for your browser, DevTools will also have a dark theme. Thanks to Emilio and jdescottes! (bug1 & bug2)
• Mozilla has a booth at FOSDEM with some talks scheduled. Come hear us talk about Firefox Development, Searchfox, Common Voice, SUMO and more!
• Many improvements to downloads are coming to Firefox 97. Instead of prompting every time, files will now download automatically. They can still be opened from the downloads panel with just one click. (bug)
• At long last, the old printing UI code has been removed! Thanks jwatt for cleaning that up.
• sgalich fixed an important performance issue in our about:logins CSV import code, cutting the import time from 3 to 10 minutes (in this particular case) to around 4 seconds!
• Table-of-contents have been fixed for Firefox Source Docs. If you notice any additional fallout, be sure to report it on Bugzilla..

Friends of the Firefox team

Resolved bugs (excluding employees)

Script to find new contributors from bug list

Fixed more than one bug

• Joaquín Serna
• Jonas Jenwald [:Snuffleupagus]
• Mathew Hodson
• Oriol Brufau [:Oriol]
• Rashelle

New contributors (🌟 = first patch)

• Joaquín Serna removed lodash flatten usage and removed lodash `remove` usage
• Kz04px updated open all tabs popup on mouse down event instead of mouse up
• Rashelle added probe for PiP disabled state and fixed PIP button z-index not respected with semi-transparent div
• Sai Hemanth removed lodash difference usage

Project Updates

Add-ons / Web Extensions

Addon Manager & about:addons

• Mathew Hodson contributed some more cleanup patches (to get rid of ChromeUtils.import calls with more than one parameters, Bug 1746709, and to remove old extension-data migration logic which have been unused for a while, Bug 1704144). Thanks Mathew!!!
• The team has created a new “Site Permissions” add-on type: Starting from Firefox 97 we are introducing a new add-on type that provides access to experimental WebAPIs (initially only “Web MIDI”) to specific website origins – Tracking meta Bug 1737161 (adding Firefox developers docs related to “adding support for new experimental WebAPIs gated by a SitePermissions addon” is tracked by Bug 1742518).

WebExtensions Framework

• Mark Hammond created a new in-tree doc page that describes the underlying architecture of the storage.sync API data backend – Bug 1745683
• As part of the ongoing work related to Manifest Version 3 WebExtensions, we have introduced a new nsIServiceWorkerManager.wakeForExtensionAPIEvent method to spawn an active background service worker when the related extension has received an API event to be handled by the background script – Bug 1728327

WebExtension APIs

• Investigated and fixed (in Firefox 97) an issue related to the runtime API’s sender.frameId / port.sender.frameId property, which was regressing LastPass browserAction popup in private windows – Bug 1748158 (regression introduced in Firefox 95 by Bug 1708243)
• Fix contextMenus / menus APIs issue triggered when the user right click on DOM elements with invalid link urls – Bug 1746494
• Landed (in Firefox 97) a small userScript API fix (to make sure that registered userScripts are unregistered as expected when the extension context that has registered them is destroyed) – Bug 1746852

Developer Tools

• After being enabled for a while on Nightly, the context selector is enabled by default in Firefox 96 (bug)

  • • 

      Now it’s easier than ever to make sure the console is executing script in the context that you think it is.

  • The context selector allows the user to execute a snippet from the webconsole on a specific document used in the page (e.g. an iframe, a worker, …)
  • The context is automatically updated on specific interaction in DevTools, like selecting an element from an iframe in the inspector, or being paused in the debugger
• Still in the webconsole, wartmanm improved autocompletion by showing the original name of source-mapped variables when the debugger is paused (bug)
• Elise made the webconsole regex filtering case sensitive by default. You can do a regex insensitive search by appending the “i” (e.g. “/needle/i”)  flag at the end of your search term (bug)
• Raphaël improved the Inspector “.cls” UI so it applies the classname as you type it (previously it was only added once you pressed Enter) (bug)
• Emilio and sebo added DevTools support for the new hwb() color function (bug1 & bug2)

  • • 

      There’s a new way to express colour in CSS, and our DevTools are ready for it.

• We’re working on removing all debugger usage of lodash (meta bug) as it’s pretty large and makes the debugger slower to open. Some of this work already led to performance improvements, and we expect more. Folks are helping us on this task, thanks Tawah, Joaquín and Sai
• ochameau fixed a Netmonitor bug that caused HAR file to be empty (bug1 & bug2)
• We’re pleased to have Claudia working on a new, beefed-up version of the Netmonitor “Edit and Resend” feature as part of the Outreachy project 🎉 (meta bug)
• For the last couple months, we teamed up with the WebCompat folks to improve diagnosing webcompat issues:
  • A warning message is now displayed in the console when the current page is in quirks mode (e.g. there is no/invalid doctype) (bug)
  • It is now possible to “pick” element from the page with “pointer-events: none” by holding the Shift key as you’re using the picker (bug)
  • You may be surprised to learn that you can pick a node when debugging Firefox for Android in about:debugging. This wasn’t really highlighted anywhere, so we now update the “pick” icon when debugging an android phone, and a notice is displayed on the phone to tell the user they can pick a node with a tap. (bug)
  • Bomsy added an initial patch to make it possible to ignore specific lines from a script in the debugger. This is behind the `devtools.debugger.features.blackbox-lines` pref and we’re looking for feedback on this (there are already follow up patches in flight) (bug)

Downloads Panel

• kpatenio fixed an issue where some file types (eg. plain text files) are opened in the selected helper app when saved via the “Save Link As” context menu item.

Form Autofill

• Enabling credit card autofill for the UK, France, and Germany has been pushed back to Fx98
  • We encountered some pref migration issues and sync issues. So we needed to back out the main patch that allowed address and credit card autofill to be enabled independently of each other.
• :sgalich fixed an issue where there is no “browser.search.region” pref on Android which could cause credit card autofill not to behave as expected on Android
• :sgalich fixed an issue where some of the old prefs from form autofill were being used to setup tests

Reader Mode (MSU Capstone project)

• Spring capstone project starts today. The students will be working on general improvements to make Reader Mode even more awesome!

Password Manager

• Thanks to :farre for enabling the LoginDetectionService on Android which helps support marking a site as high-value
• :tgiles fixed an issue where an extra blank space was displayed at the bottom of about:logins when a new login was saved
• :sgalich improved keyboard support for the search box in about:logins

Picture-in-Picture

• mtigley is working on the infrastructure for site-specific video adapters
  • This will make it possible for us to apply very fine-grained interaction rules for custom video players, which should help make it possible to (eventually) expose more controls in the Picture-in-Picture player window
• kpatenio is working on adding WebVTT caption/subtitle support
• Rashelle added a probe to measure how many users have disabled the Picture-in-Picture toggle
  • She’s also working on making the PiP player window’s audio button reflect the state of the tab’s audio button
  • She’s also adding a window icon for the PiP window

Performance

• Special thanks to barret who is continuing to burn down OS.File usage! Remember, OS.File is slow to load, and you should use IOUtils instead for disk access.
• florian identified a path where we’ll start compositing at 60hz even if there’s nothing to do! There’s a nice opportunity for power / processing savings here. hiro has a patch that landed but bounced, but watch this space.

Performance Tools

• Added initial support for inline source view to the Firefox Profiler. Example profile: https://share.firefox.dev/3qe5bQk For now it supports local builds and local symbol servers only, but broader support will be coming.

  • 

    Double clicking on a call node will open up the source view at the bottom of the page!

• Limited the visible threads to 15 by default.
• Quick reminders:
  • If you profiled something and are puzzled with the profile you captured, we have the Joy of Profiling (#joy-of-profiling:mozilla.org) channel where people share their profiles and get help from the people who are more familiar with the Firefox Profiler.
  • We also have Joy of Profiling Open Sessions where people bring their profile and we try to analyze the profile together over Zoom. See the Performance Office Hours calendar.

Privacy/Security

• In Nightly 98 we will be enabling enforcement of Script Name restrictions, which prevents (nearly all) scripts that don’t begin with chrome:// or resource:// from loading/executing in the parent process.  In release builds, it will fail with a console warning; in debug builds it will crash.

Search and Navigation

• Drew fixed an issue in the address bar where typing ‘g’ and <enter> vs ‘g’ (wait a little) <enter> could lead to different results.
• Drew also fixed a couple of cases of apparent jank when opening the address bar pop-up.
• Mandy fixed a case where the “Switch to Tab” result could be duplicated in the address bar.