Firefox/Planning/2012-09-26

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Planning Meeting Details

• Wednesdays - 11:00am PDT, 18:00 UTC
• Mountain View Offices: Warp Core Conference Room
• Toronto Offices: Finch Conference Room
• irc.mozilla.org #planning for backchannel
• (the developer meeting takes place on Tuesdays)

Video/Teleconference Details - NEW

• 650-903-0800 or 650-215-1282 x92 Conf# 99696 (US/INTL)
• 1-800-707-2533 (pin 369) Conf# 99696 (US)
• Vidyo Room: ProductCoordination
• Vidyo Guest URL

REMEMBER

These notes are read by people who weren't able to attend the meeting. Please make sure to include links and context so they can be understood.

Actions from Last Week

• Matt/Cheng to collate PDF.js feedback: [1]
• Gavin to update on the state of 3rd party add on drops
• John J to establish Mozilla Preferred spelling of crapton[ne]
  • In order to properly assess this issue, it is important to understand the relevant etymology:
    • "Crapton[ne]" is, obviously, a portmanteau of two words. "Crap" has its origins from the mid-15th century, when crappe was "grain that was trodden underfoot in a barn, chaff". "Ton", or in French "tonne", has its origins in "tun", a large cask, coming from the old Germanic and Celtic languages of Northern Europe, potentially as far back as the 9th century.
    • It appears that while "ton" has a much older history, "tonne", now often used to refer to a metric ton of 1000kg, is in better keeping with Mozilla's spirit of internationalization and standardization. It is therefore suggested that, for Mozillians, the correct spelling is "craptonne".
• John J to run next week's meeting

Schedule & Progress on Upcoming Releases

Firefox Desktop

Release (15, 10esr)

• ESR10.0.8 will be released on 10/9

• Schedule change for cycle at the end of the year.

Beta (16)

• Beta 5 is being built, will be shipped before the end of the week
  • Includes all the Win8 fixes we're planning to take for FF16
• Beta 6 (minimal change) will be going to build on Monday, with a short turnaround on pushing out
• Sign-offs will be held next Wednesday morning PT

Aurora (17)

• CTP blocklisting (and testing) is hopefully coming this week
• Social API uplift incoming as well

Firefox Mobile

Beta (16)

• Still chasing down a couple of high volume crashes related to CyanogenMod for Beta 6
• Final decision on whether or not we're shipping ARMv6 will be based upon feedback volume and unit testing after bug 793740 lands

Services

Firefox Sync

• Planning continuing for the next generation of Sync (branding TBD)
  • Will use Firefox Account for auth
  • Plan to be published by EOW

Android Snippets

• Spec mostly done
• mconnor on point to get through privacy/security reviews
• exact release vehicle TBD

Add-on SDK

Release (1.10 -> Firefox 16, 17)

Stabilization (1.11 -> Firefox 17, 18)

Development (1.12 -> Firefox 18, 19)

Landing progress:

• loader: ✓
• m-c landing plan - under review, will report at length next week.

Re-pack progress:

• re-pack emails sent out to 400+ developers
• roughly ~10% feedback rate, no serous problems reported
• Jorge is looking at generating a report for exact numbers

Feedback Summary

Desktop

Things have stabilized for 15.0.1:

• Still seeing reports of slowness and perf issues. Looking back historically though, it seems we are close to where we were towards the start of the year. [2]
• We see a general increase in reports of Google sites performing poorly
• We saw another spike in Babylon related issues over the last week.[3]

Mobile

Release:

15.0.1 is fairly stable. We are tracking a few crashes that affect both Release and Beta (Mainly Nexus 7, Bug 792473.

Please read the Mobile Meeting notes from this morning for more detail.

User Experience (design & research)

• [desktop]
  • Simple web notifications bug 782211 - opt-in doorhanger and fallback notifications (i.e. when no OS system like on Android or MacOS Notification Center): http://shorlander.dropmark.com/80842 (Shorlander)
  • [Australis] Customization - Final design summary spec being assembled (Zhenshuo, Blake)
  • [dev tools] (Brian Dils)
    • Video mockup walkthrough of "Activating the devools" - video here (mov)
      • Alternatively, on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaFJFwDHBYc&feature=youtu.be
  • [Social API] (Boriss)
    • Notification indicators for headers landed last week, next step is specific styles & colors per platform as default
    • Still some visual/polish glitches, including visual problems with logged-in state
  • [hometab/newtab] (Boriss)
    • Integrating feedback from several sources (see ideas from Shorlander, Ian) into one design described in one document. Updates on wiki
    • Direction of adjusting to devices & user interaction while being consistent enough for muscle memory formation very much the shared goal (eg, slide right for more categories)
    • Kickoff with everyone who's worked on some aspect of this, mobile and desktop, as well as research late last week

• [sync/identity]
  • draft proposal covering all the cases (new user; existing Sync user; existing Persona ID user) for Firefox sign-in / sync setup on desktop and mobile Draft document (pdf) (zhenshuo + ibarlow)
    • comments go here in an etherpad
  • User-reserach completed their project understanding how people think about their identities both online and in the real world. Final report in preparation. (Mary, Lindsay)

• [project SPF (security/privacy)] (larissa)
  • Real v1 draft of Designing Usable Security in Firefox report -- please read!
    • finishing this work and brainstorming phase 2 of Project SPF
  • looking into bringing our Mixed Content designs to Android Firefox

• [webRTC] (Boriss)
  • Sketching ideas for the need for cohesive, consistent notifications across devices, main question what kind of priority Firefox gives presence (communication) versus flow (present task focus)

• [metro] (yuan)
  • Bug triage for the Metro Preview. Preview blockers are getting implemented
    • Progress bar UI: bug 772304
    • Tab overflow UI: bug 785489
  • Mockups
    • Bookmark: http://cl.ly/image/0g103E0a2L0r/o
    • Pin to start: http://cl.ly/image/2u3o0q3N1H1O
  • Working on the blog post about Metro preview with Brian and also Q3 summary document

• [android] (ibarlow)
  • Production contractor starting Oct. 1 \o/ (someone to help with visual asset production for all the android screen res/size versions)
  • bug 794088 Updates to menu
    • mockup http://cl.ly/image/0c0l400D460G
    • new icons http://cl.ly/image/3Z393P3k362K
  • Private Browsing, Guest Mode, Safe Browsing mockups underway, coming soon
  • UI Responsiveness efforts – working list https://firefox-ux.etherpad.mozilla.org/25
  • Armv6 design tweaks, wrapping up this week
  • Android Sync Setup Improvements
    • Sketches – http://cl.ly/image/2r3B1C2i462g
    • Working with Sync team and Desktop UX to scope work https://wiki.mozilla.org/Services/Sync/NextGen
    • also see Identity/Sync report above
  • Longer term work
    • First Run & Update UX – sketches http://cl.ly/image/3c460L2v1Z30
    • Search Enhancements – sketches http://cl.ly/image/1Q2x3J2N1X1s
    • Top Sites customization on about:home – preliminary sketching http://cl.ly/image/1F1R2J1W1d1c
    • Future improvements to about:home – sketches http://cl.ly/image/1x0A1K0r2g2m
  • opt-in flow for test pilot on Android Firefox (Bryan, Gregg)

• [Behavioral Segmentation Study] (Lindsay, Bill, Leo)
  • Detailed planning started. The goal is to define and elaborate distinct user groups for Firefox based on a diary study, contextual inquiry and quantitative surveys and analysis. Once established, user groups will be publicly available and employed to make decisions about features and user experience design decisions when resources for a user research study are not available or are unnecessary.
  • As part of this planning, Leo is starting a quantitative study to identify Firefox user behaviors. Specifically, the project will
    • Establish a typology of Firefox Users based on Test Pilot data including survey (attitudes) and behaviors
    • Identify bias in Test Pilot users as compared to general population, i.e. Metrics report
    • Provide quantitative insight to inform qualitative behavioral segmentation study; would help to identify which groups to recruit from and what questions to ask

• [other/future]
  • working on a draft of a system of UX metrics and success criteria (Madhava, Cori)
  • in the related-to-Firefox-design dept: Design principles behind FirefoxOS blog post here (Patryk)

Market Insights

Desktop / Platform

• A group of web developers, led by Google, released RoboHornet, a new "benchmark designed around performance pain points real web developers care about". Microsoft and Mozilla have largely described the suite as a collection of micro-tests inappropriate for overall benchmarking.

Marketing, Press & Public Reaction

Marketing

• No marketing updates this week

Press

Happy Birthday, Firefox: The Little Web Browser That Could Turns 10

Need to tune up your browser? Firefox Health Report can help

Firefox Health Report Gives Your Browser a Check-Up

Firefox 18 to be delayed by a week