Talk:Firefox:2.0 Product Planning:Draft Plan

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Release Criteria

• schrep: I like nice hard lines when doing release criteria. So I'd make the criteria as simple as possible - 100% of P1's complete. We'll also work on and accept P2/P3's, but if it is important enough to block the release it's a P1. I didn't edit because I thought there might be discussions.
• Beltzner: Originally these criteria were my idea, but thinking back to my time with IBM, it was nitpicky stuff like calculating %ages of fixed bugs to meet Integrated Product Development (IPD) standards that ended up being used to ship crappy products. We'd bicker over whether or not to include invalid or retargeted bugs in those figures, etc. So maybe it would be easier to just say 100% of P1s. Is there a better way of reflecting the secondary goals of wanting to actually put effort into fixing a lot of the aviary2.0 blockers (which include a lot of UI polish bugs)? Maybe make that a P2 LI?

Add Bookmark Search to Address Bar

• djst: My proposal for making things easier for the user would be to broaden the autocomplete drop-down list of the address bar to also include Bookmark Search results (currently available from the Bookmarks sidebar). This would mean you could type e.g. "weather" in the address bar, and the result list would include your weather forecast bookmarks, even if their actual addresses didn't contain the word "weather". The Bookmark Search feature, as it is now, is hidden and probably unused by many people. (Apologizes if this is the wrong place for feature suggestions.)
• Beltzner: this is the right place; I'd also suggest that you add comments on the discussion page of the new bookmark and history system breakout page since this falls into that particular bucket.
• Triplicate:It'd be nice to provide previews for bookmarks that provide similar titles. Example, searching for weather gives three links with similar titles, press enter on the search term, three thumbnails of the website comes up.

Déjà Vu

"Firefox 2 will aim to build on the success of Firefox by addressing issues related to the problem of managing the vast amounts of information available on the Internet. Our goal is to provide a browser that helps users manage and organize their online information channels."

Wow, that sounds a whole lot like what Netscape Marketing once said about Netscape Communicator 5 and its planned SmartBrowsing functionality. But thankfully the notes you've put here is more than screenshots. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs, blog) 14:04, 4 Dec 2005 (PST)

Central Administration / Installation

• ruko: To use firefox in companies, larger organisation, even smaller workgroups with few people doing the support, it would be very helpful, to have the possibility to do a central configuration or administration: (1) set or change configuration, (2) install extensions, (3) allow or disallow users doing various settings or extensions installation.
• cst: A must for use in an enterprise environment (with Windows ADS) are true MSI installer packages. Firefox configuration and installation/configuration of extensions through Group Policy Settings would be helpfull too. Very nice would be a tool to build custom MSI packages including the needed extension, themes and default configurations.

Updater

• mh166: After updating (or after installing) an extension it should not be necassary to restart Firefox. It's really anoying if you got dozens of sites opened and have to restart for updates taking change. I'm software developper of my own, too. And I think there should be possibilities for updating without restarting (haven't worked with plugin(systems) yet, but will do). So: why is it necessary atm?

• Mike: Simply put, the way XUL overlays have always worked doesn't coexist well with dynamic changes. This is something we're aware of, but this is a core issue that most likely cannot be addressed in a release where the core (Gecko) code is API-frozen.

• frandom: When a restart is necessary it should be possible for Firefox to remember what was open and restore it

Saving files

• matthew: When I'm saving a file and Firefox detects, that I'm on to overwrite another file with the same name, I'm only able to overwrite the existing file or abort, start again and rename it from the beginning. It would be nice, if Firefox shows me a dialog, like Konqueror does, for renaming the file "just in time".

CTL issues

• Veeven: Correct display of complex script languages (most Indian languages). IE6 in WinXP SP2 shows this page correctly, but Firefox 1.5 does not. I expect that I would be able to see webpages in my native lanugage comfortably with Firefox 2. Most Indian users will benefit from this.

• This is a core Gecko issue, and may or may not be fixable within the Gecko 1.8.1 constraints - Mike

Anti-aliasing of fonts

• Veeven: Anti-aliasing of fonts makes web pages look better. I think it may not be possible for Firefox 2.0. But, it is much needed to improve the visual look of any web page. Amaya does it already.

Support for JPEG2000

• momendo: JPEG2K has been released as a standard and there has been very little movement in the browser world to support it. We have a chicken/egg scenario where browsers don't really need to support it unless there is a strong need. JPEG has become a very popular format for photos. Digital cameras don't support J2K but if it's supported in the browser, the case becomes really strong to support it. There is a bug filed for it here. J2K can really improve image quality and save bandwidth. PNG overlaps some of the features of J2K. But I would argue J2K has better PSNR and can be lossy if needed. Once it's in trunk, it can be used in tags like Canvas with alpha channel.

Stealth surfing

• NisseSthlm: Private data is both a good thing and a bad. Mostly the Firefox' saving of private data is making the surf experience better, but sometimes you don't want Firefox to remember the websites you've visited during a period of time for one reason or another. At work, for example, you'd want Firefox to remember your Google searches in "Saved Forms" for future access. But on coffee breaks you might want to surf private stuff and "saved searches" would only clutter and disturb when the coffee break is over. By clearing your Private Data you erase everything without consideration. For "coffee break surfing" it would be nice to have a "Stealth Mode" that doesn't save any private data. This Stealth Mode should be fairly easy to switch on and off. I believe all of us use our browser for "important" as well as nonsense surfing and since the nonsense surfing is impossible to distinguish for "Clear Private Data", you'd want to be able to tell the browser that, for now this surfing is nonsense and shouldn't be remembered.

Reduced Memory Usage

• chiklit: This has probably been said tons of times but it would be nice to see a reduction in memory usage in Firefox 2.0. Just in viewing this page with no other tabs open FF is using nearly 50mb of memory, while the same page on IE or Opera uses nearly half that.