Closing out 2025 Strong – These Weeks in Firefox: Issue 193

Highlights

• Special shout-out to volunteer contributor Lorenz A for fixing a huge smattering of bugs in our DevTools code!
  • Lorenz fixed the alignment of numeric values in Netmonitor and fixed an absolute ton of refactoring bugs (#1665702, #1709063, #1632071), including migrating old style function + prototype to proper ES classes (#2004038, #2004205, #2004203, #2004204, #2004206, #2004207, #2004222, #2004225, #2004231, #2004232, #2004208, #2004210, #2004211, #2004212, #2004213, #2004214, #2004216, #2004217, #2004215, #2004218, #2004219)
• The FirefoxDevTools social accounts have been renamed “Firefox For Web Developers”. Come follow us!
  • https://bsky.app/profile/webdevs.firefox.com
  • https://mastodon.social/@firefoxwebdevs
  • We’ve still got the same handle on Twitter (“Hacks” was turned into “Firefox For Web Dev” there)
• We are enabling the unified trust panel for testing in Nightly, which unifies the lock and shield into one item. This appears to the very left of the URLbar as a shield with a checkbox in it. If you notice any bugs, please file them in the Protections UI component
  • 

• The Desktop Integrations team is starting a controlled rollout of the new Backup feature, starting with users on Windows 10! This gives users more options and ability to move their data from machine to machine when getting new devices. (146 Release Notes)
  • 

Friends of the Firefox team

Resolved bugs (excluding employees)

Volunteers that fixed more than one bug

• Aloys
• Kipchumba Chelilim [:mrchumbastic]
• Lorenz A

New contributors (🌟 = first patch)

• Dominique
  • Fix: Mocked a Fluent ID in testCommonSettingControlPropertiesSet to eliminate logspam errors.
    • Bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2000957
• Aloys
  • Fix: Removed unused browser.display.windows.non_native_menus preference.
    • Bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2002985
  • Fix: Removed unused identity.fxaccounts.migrateToDevEdition preference.
    • Bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2003194
• Kipchumba Chelilim [:mrchumbastic]
  • Fix: Fully removed confirm-auth prompts, related preferences, and test files.
    • Bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1905323
  • Fix: Enabled clear-search button and reveal-password preferences when launching Storybook.
    • Bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1956817
• Khalid AlHaddad
  • Fix: Added WebDriver classic tests for the “Get All Cookies” command.
    • Bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1983822
• Lorenz A
  • Bug 983296: Right-aligned numeric values in Netmonitor columns.
    • https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=983296
  • Bug 1632071: Removed unnecessary exports from Front modules.
    • https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1632071
  • Bug 1665702: Removed unused idGenerator argument from networkMessageUpdates.
    • https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1665702
  • Bug 1709063: Stopped exposing toolbox.resourceCommand.
    • https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1709063
  • Each of these updates converted an existing module into a modern ES class:
    • Request.js — https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2004038
    • toolbox-host-manager.js — https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2004203
    • devtools.js — https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2004204
    • panel.js — https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2004205
    • grip-provider.js — https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2004206
    • dom-view.js — https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2004207
    • dom-decorator.js — https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2004208
    • accessibility panel (devtools/client/accessibility/panel.js) — https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2004210
    • accessibility-view.js — https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2004211
    • protocol test head (xpcshell) — https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2004212
    • network observer throttle test — https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2004213
    • discovery tests — https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2004214
    • heapsnapshot Match.sys.mjs — https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2004215
    • server test actors — https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2004216
    • layout reflows observer tests — https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2004217
    • DevToolPanel test harness — https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2004218
    • DevToolsStartup.sys.mjs — https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2004219
    • worker-transport.js — https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2004222
    • stream-utils.js — https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2004225
    • lazy-pool.js — https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2004231
    • Response.js — https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2004232
• Sajid Anwar [:sajidanwar]
  • Fix: Updated WebDriver navigation to retain the URL when a navigation-committed event fires.
    • Bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2004191

Project Updates

Add-ons / Web Extensions

Addon Manager & about:addons

• As part of the final steps to migrate WebExtensions and AddonManager telemetry analyses and dashboards away from legacy telemetry, we have introduced a new addons Glean ping to submit the list of active add-ons and themes (on startup, on updates and every 24h) – Bug 2000866
  • NOTE: The glean addons.active_addons and addons.theme metrics will still be included in both the metrics and addons Glean pings. However the addons ping is expected to become the preferred source of data for add-ons related analyses, whereas the metrics ping may be better suited for analyses that correlate other metrics with the add-ons listed in the addons.active_addons metric.

WebExtension APIs

• Fixed a regression related to nativeMessaging API performance, previously regressed in Firefox 138 by Bug 1945470, longer term fix to reduce messages roundtrip time for Chrome Workers landed in Nightly 147 and workaround disabling the DOM Workers timer manager through prefs uplifted to ESR 140 – Bug 2002517

DevTools

• Alexandra Borovova [:Sasha] fixed setting navigator.maxTouchPoints in iframes when enabling touch simulation in Responsive Design Mode (#1706066)
• Alexandre Poirot [:ochameau] fixed taking memory snapshot for Fenix in about:debugging (#2002728)
• Nicolas Chevobbe [:nchevobbe] added a 0.01× playback rate in the Animations panel (#2002248)
• Nicolas Chevobbe [:nchevobbe] fixed the “Add new rule” button for element in shadow-root (#1940930)
• Nicolas Chevobbe [:nchevobbe] add an anchor badge in the markup view for anchor elements (#1895196)
• Nicolas Chevobbe [:nchevobbe] added @position-try rules in Style Editor At-rules sidebar (#2003270)
• Julian Descottes [:jdescottes] improved target area for the Debugger left splitter (#1902661)

WebDriver

• Khalid AlHaddad added the previously missing WebDriver classic tests for the “Get All Cookies” command.
• Vincent Hilla removed code in our WebDriver BiDi implementation that handled HTTP 204 no-content responses, as this logic is no longer required with the updated about:blank behavior.
• Benjamin VanderSloot added WebDriver tests for Global Privacy Control support, which will ship with the next geckodriver release.
• Julian Descottes updated script.evaluate and script.callFunction to bypass CSP restrictions, which could prevent using eval or new Function. Note that this only impacts WebDriver BiDi, other consumers of the underlying Debugger API such as DevTools or WebExtension are not affected.
• Alexandra Borovova implemented a new “emulation.setScreenSettingsOverride” command to allow clients to emulate the screen dimensions for a list of browsing or user contexts.
• Henrik Skupin fixed the JSON serialization of Chrome windows in our WebDriver Classic (Marionette) implementation.
• Henrik Skupin fixed a bug in the “session.new” command for WebDriver BiDi that previously returned an invalid response payload due to the missing mandatory “setWindowRect” capability.
• Henrik Skupin improved the logic in Marionette and WebDriver tests to ensure newly opened Chrome windows are fully loaded before proceeding.

New Tab Page

• We have a train-hop coming up for next week (~Tuesday), presuming a green QA sign-off
• We’ve rolled out a change to transition more of our New Tab telemetry to use OHTTP by default world-wide, providing better privacy guarantees for our users.
• Scott [:thecount] Downe localized the Chinese version of default Top Sites to Chinese script, improving label readability and recognition for zh-CN users.
• dgrant@mozilla.com corrected focus ring theming on the New Tab Lists widget, bringing keyboard/high-contrast outlines in line with the active theme for better a11y.
• Scott [:thecount] Downe tuned SOV so sponsored/default tiles respect frecency order, reducing cases where promoted tiles displace organic frequent sites.

Search and Navigation

Urlbar

• Marco landed a patch to limit semantic history search to a list of supported locales (1992920)
• Dao and Moritz continued their searchbar widget work that falls under the larger multi-context address bar project (2003799, 2003804, 2003043, 2002799, 2002377, 1983016, 2001082)
• Dharma fixed a bug with the unified search button so that we show a different icon when the user is searching and their “keyword.enabled” pref is false (1922114)
• Dharma also landed a patch about the messaging to be shown to users when they organically navigate to google.com, bing.com or duckduckgo.com (1982133)
• James fixed a bug where autocomplete stopped working for certain URLs (2001284)

Firefox Suggest

• Drew and Daisuke have completed the implementation of the Firefox Suggest online flight status result suggestions (1982135)
• Drew fixed a flight result bug (2000873) and sports result bug (2000851) that affected screen readers
• Drew made several improvements to how online Ad Marketplace suggestions are dismissed (2003624, 2002383)
• Drew landed a patch that removes support for unmanaged Merino suggestions (2002141)

Places

• Marco landed a patch to shrink the size of the favicons database by removing expired favicon relations (1959694)

Storybook/Reusable Components/Acorn Design System

• Hanna Jones [:hjones] implemented a temporary moz-select icon rendering workaround in Toolkit so custom select options reliably show icons across platforms until a standards-compliant path lands.
  • This was to support search engines in SRD

Settings Redesign

• Mark Striemer [:mstriemer] migrated Import Browser data to config-based prefs, reducing UI flicker and making the import entry point more reliable for first‑run and migration flows.
• Stephanie Cunnane [:scunnane] moved Default search engine to config-based prefs, making about:preferences#search more resilient to policy and locale changes and surfacing predictable engine defaults.
• akulyk implemented slot-based config for items/options in config-driven settings, enabling dynamic option lists and cleaner keyboard‑friendly rendering in Settings.
• Mark Striemer [:mstriemer] fixed missing margins when the first child input is hidden, restoring expected spacing in nested controls across Preferences and other settings panels.
• Harshit Sohaney [:hsohaney] fixed the visibility of the backup settings
• Mark Kennedy [:mkennedy] Updated keyboard focus when loading a sub-pane to the first setting Bug 2002958
• Mark Kennedy [:mkennedy] Updated the about:logins button to be a link Bug 2002931
• Mark Kennedy [:mkennedy] Fixed the focus ring being cut off on the back button of sub-panes Bug 2002923
• Tim Giles [:tgiles] Updated payment methods to be sorted by recently-added Bug 2002939
• Emma Zühlcke [:emz] converted the ETP top-level card to config-based prefs, tightening about:preferences#privacy load performance and enabling remote defaults/rollouts without code changes.
• Emma Zühlcke [:emz] added config-based ETP Advanced controls, unblocking granular privacy toggles that can ship or update via configuration and stay consistent across platforms.
• akulyk added a Firefox Support section to the SRD About Firefox page, SRD on only (new group to be shown later).