These Weeks In Firefox: Issue 117

Highlights

• Firefox 101 releases today! Here are the release notes.
• We’ve been refactoring the Screenshots feature. You can help us test this by setting `screenshots.browser.component.enabled` to `true` in about:config
  • New bugs should block Bug 1696573 – [Meta] Move screenshots into a dedicated browser component
  • Suggestions invited as feature request bugs or on Mozilla Connect
• Drew made it so that we exclude history URLs with the AMP query parameter from appearing in address bar results and the new tab page
• dimi has enabled using Fathom to recognize credit card number fields! We expect this should make credit card autofill more reliable in regions where it is enabled.
• Query Parameter Stripping is starting to ride the Firefox 102 release train in ETP strict and Private Browsing Mode, this has been active in Nightly since Firefox 96. You can read more about it in our intent-to-prototype.
  • This strips known tracking query parameters from URLs as you’re browsing, such as the Facebook click ID.
  • You can use the `privacy.query_stripping.strip_list` pref to add your own query parameters to strip. However, beware of any website breakage this may cause.
• There is an ongoing effort to switch us away from the Mozilla-specific JSMs to ES6 modules in our privileged code. See this meta bug for more information.
• Want to contribute to Firefox? Here are some mentored good first bugs for new contributors:
  • Bug 1771550 – PiP Subtitles Support for Khan Academy
  • Bug 1771551 – PiP Subtitles Support for BBC.co.uk
  • Bug 1771549 – PiP Subtitles Support for EdX

Friends of the Firefox team

Introductions/Shout-Outs

• Welcome Janvi [:janvi01] from Outreachy, who will be helping us improve Picture-in-Picture!

Resolved bugs (excluding employees)

Volunteers that fixed more than one bug

• Itiel
• Mike Ratcliffe [:miker] [:mratcliffe] [:mikeratcliffe]
• Shane Hughes [:aminomancer]

New contributors (🌟 = first patch)

• 🌟 Dave Rigby contributed a change to the linux perf support for the Firefox Profiler.
• sayuree added support formatting the current stack using Log.jsm / Log.stackTrace()

Project Updates

Add-ons / Web Extensions

WebExtensions Framework

• wasm-unsafe-eval CSP directive and extensions:
  • Behaviors expected for manifest_version 2 and manifest_version 3 extensions has been described in Bug 1766027
    • “manifest_version: 2” extensions will still be able to use wasm unconditionally, “manifest_version: 3”  extensions will have to specify `wasm-unsafe-eval` in their own custom CSP
  • A regression on manifest_version 2 extensions using their own custom CSP has been fixed in Bug 1770468 (fixed in Nightly 102 itself)
• Fixed a bug related to optional permissions changes not propagated to preloaded child processes – Bug 1766822
• Fixed a fission-related regression on extension pages moved to BFCache as a side-effect of a cross-process navigation – Bug 1768522

WebExtension APIs

• Igorlogius fixed menus API support for registering context menus items on the bookmarks. Thanks to Igorlogius for contributing this fix! – Bug 1768371

Fluent

• Fewer than 190 DTD strings left in the entirety of mozilla-central!

Form Autofill

• Thanks to manisha.singh2019 for fixing a contrast issue in manage addresses/credit card dialogs
• :dimi fixed a performance issue where identifyAutofillFields was not performing well on pages with many forms

PDFs & Printing

• Hanna fixed an issue with margins being invalid on small paper sizes (like receipt printers) Bug 1756169
• Emilio fixed an issue where you margins and headers/footers couldn’t be changed when printing a PDF Bug 1752379

Picture-in-Picture

• Niklas landed a site-specific adapter for Hulu to help make sure the mute toggle works properly there

Performance Tools (aka Firefox Profiler)

• A contributor contributed an improvement in our heuristics to detect kernel frames when importing data from a linux perf capture. Thanks Dave Rigby! (PR #4050)
  
  (https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/755459/168813018-58a2a6bd-12e9-4c95-a042-4fcb71ceb0af.png)
• We fixed a bug where clicking the activity graph (that is the graph in the timeline) wouldn’t select the right node (PR #4039)
• We localized the delete profile panel.    (PR #4029)
  
• We changed how we draw “instant” markers (PR #4024)
  
  (https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/454175/166269264-318dde41-9d2c-4e52-a9ee-9ea51a40b30f.png)

Privacy/Security

• Hannah landed a patch to migrate Nightly users from the network cookie lifetime policy to the Sanitizer (Bug 1681498)
  • This is the first step for removing the deprecated cookie lifetime policy feature. We want to remove the feature entirely in Fx 103. It will be replaced by the sanitize-on-shutdown mechanism, previously under about:preferences#privacy -> History

Search and Navigation

• Daisuke changed the logic for changing/maintaining the caret position in the address bar when the address changes
• A bunch of bugs related to autofilling URLs in the address bar have been fixed by Drew (1, 2, 3, 4) and Daisuke (1, 2, 3)
• Standard8 made us report default search engine data via Glean in addition to legacy telemetry

ESMification status

• This is a project to switch us away from the Mozilla-specific JSMs to ES6 modules in our privileged code. The infrastructure has been landing slowly but surely into mozilla-central to help with the transition.
  • Here is the metabug for the effort
  • After much deliberation, it seems these types of modules will have the file extension “.sys.mjs”. Example: “PictureInPicture.sys.mjs”.
  • Expect a mailing list post soon, and instructions on how you can help with getting us onto ES6 modules.