Firefox/Projects/Firefox Start

Instead of loading Firefox Start from the network, use a locally hosted web application that provides the same functionality but offers greater potential for user control & customization, as well as engagement and interaction between Mozilla and users.

• Proposed by: beltzner, cbeard
• Project lead: mak
• Project members: mak, beltzner, cbeard, limi

Status

First patch available for review; need to answer questions about search parameters.

Next steps

• decide for name, whether about:home or about:start
• offline detection

Goals

• locally hosted page with
• no chrome privilege required
• some form of offline experience
• control/customization of search engine used
• ability to display user engagement messages from mozilla.com servers

Non Goals

• ability to perform history/cache searches when offline
• option to use Google-hosted Firefox Start page
• For the initial implementation will not feature any dynamic content like history/bookmark lookups.

Timeline / Milestones

Phase 1 : locally hosted replacement

• host local HTML/JS/CSS content (done)
• ensure search codes remained consistent with existing page (localization, geoip/load balancing redirects)(partially done)
  
• ensure cookies are not sent when page loads
  

Phase 2 : add dynamism, offline support

• allow search engine to be modified based on Search Box selection follow-up, perf hog due to content priv.
• add dynamic snippet delivery and display (partially done)
  
• add offline detection and messaging

Phase 3 : bells and whistles (time permitting)

• design changes
• a/b testing support
• some local places DB analysis (about:me style stuff)

Timeline TBD

These are the bugs of interest:

Bug & Summary	Owner	Status
bug 563723 - add about:home to mimic Firefox Start	mak	awaiting review
bug 563738 - Add current Mozilla "snippets" in the about:home page	mak	awaiting review
bug 544819 - Bug 544819 - Create a basic Home Tab linking to the current Home Page	nobody	haven't started, waits app tabs

Requirements

• privacy: sandbox connections so that cookies are not sent
• performance: benchmark to show performance difference over web-hosted Firefox Start
• performance: better offline experience than web-hosted Firefox Start
• metrics: ability to do a/b testing with engagement pieces

Dependencies

• webdev: engagement pieces to be delivered from mozilla.com service
• fix localStorage bug: it does not allow to set entries for URIs without a host (about: pages have just scheme and path). bug 568091 (done)
• localStorage is main-thread only (IO on another thread is future target though since not really needed for first implementation). (follow-up)
• Use search service engine definitions, inject from chrome context at startup (done)

Testing

tbd

Related Projects

• Application Tabs
• Home Tab