Firefox/Planning/2012-03-14

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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# 95312 (US/INTL)
• 1-800-707-2533 (pin 369) Conf# 95312 (US)
• Vidyo Room: Warp Core
• 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

• Jorge to follow-up with Ant Downloader devs/plan of action (from desktop Feedback) and ensure beta and follow-on releases address identified issue(s)

Schedule & Progress on Upcoming Releases

Add-on SDK

Release (1.5 -> Firefox 10, 11)

• All signs point to good
• Published a blog post outlining Add-on SDK compatibility & Firefox ESR to help answer questions

Stabilization (1.6 -> Firefox 11, 12)

• Released 1.6b2 yesterday!
• Still on track to release 3 April, 2012

Development (1.7 -> Firefox 12, 13)

• We are testing to make sure we will support globals per compartment when it ships
• Still on track to merge 3 April, 2012

• We have a plan to have add-ons widgets at the top of the browser
  • Feature page here
  • Stephen Horlander's excellent mockups here

Apps

Rough schedule

• end Q1 - consumer preview
• sometime in Q2 - beta
• end Q2 - GA

Market Insights

Desktop / Platform

Google

• A bit of information regarding the ongoing US Federal Trade Commission's antitrust investigation of Google has been revealed. Apple has been received a subpeona to provide information that may show whether Google is abusing its dominance of Internet search to boost revenue in the mobile phone advertising market.
• The Chrome team has started work on embedding the Chrome to Mobile extension to within the browser itself. This functionality would use Google's Cloud Print server to maintain a list of a user's mobile devices and allow the user to easily send pages to them.
• The team has also added support for flow-control in SPDY version 3.0 to Chrome. A draft IETF specification version of the protocol has also been published.
• Work has also started on Bluetooth device support and USB device support in the browser.
• Google staffers also submitted a proposed Speech JavaScript API specification to the W3C. This API would allow web developers to incorporate speech recognition and speech synthesis into their web pages.
• Google team members (possibly on their own time) are also collaborating to produce an xterm-compatible terminal emulator and standalone ssh client for Chrome. It uses NativeClient to connect directly to ssh servers.
• Work has also started to implement one-click login to Chrome by prompting the user to log in every time she or he opens a Google property. In related news, development builds of the ChromeOS operating system can now automatically sync Google Docs documents to the local device.
• Google also confirmed that they are working on a version of Chrome for Windows 8 Metro.
• Google Product Manager Punit Soni said in an interview that the company is working on integrating its 4 separate gaming platforms this year. Analysts expect heavy use of both HTML5 and NativeClient technologies in an effort to better compete with Facebook. The company also registered dozens of related domain names.

Apple

• Apple released version 5.1.4 of Safari. The release is largely a security one with 83 security fixes, 72 of which could be considered critical.

Tizen

• Chinese manufacturer Huawei joined the Tizan Association and said they would produce Tizen phones.
• Here's a video of short demo of Tizen that was made at an invite-only event at the Mobile World Congress.

Microsoft

• Windows Division President Steven Sinofsky posted a lengthy description of all the user interface design features of MSIE10.

Security

• The Pwn2Own contest was held at the CanSecWest conference. French security firm VUPEN won the contest by demonstrating zero-day exploits of Google Chrome and MSIE9. The second-place team also produced an exploit against Firefox, but it was one that was previously known and had been patched. The Chrome team suspected that VUPEN had used vulnerabilities in the Chrome Flash sandbox, and set a "trap" by including a particular signature for crashes, but unfortunately that had the unintended effect of causing a number of crashes for end-users. Google was unhappy with the the rules of the Pwn2Own event and sponsored their own, parallel contest called Pwnium, and awarded two developers $120,000 sandbox breaks, making a total of three. A Google developer at the event posted an interesting summary of his view of the Pwn2Own and Pwnium events to his Google+ feed.
• A study found that half of all rogue online pharmacies register their domains with just two registrars.
• Microsoft posted more information about current memory security measures and ForceASLR, a new loader option used by MSIE10 that instructs the operating system to randomize the locations of all modules loaded by the browser.

Mobile

Summary below, full update here and in your inbox.

• Chrome for Android updates include support for Android Beam and availability in more countries
• The Android Market was renamed to Google Play; now restricts use of 3rd-party in-app payment processors
• Ice Cream Sandwich updates rolling out to flagship Samsung and HTC devices
• The Google-Oracle trial concerning Java use in Android to start in April
• Opera adds Opera Mini Next as version for early-adopter feature preview
• Opera Mobile 12 adds WebGL and Camera API support
• Opera shows MIPS- and Intel-based versions of its mobile browser
• Android tablet sales will take over iOS by 2016, according to data released by IDC
• Latest iPad features a new display and a better camera; Samsung exec said to have confirmed an upcoming iPad Mini
• The Internet of Things arriving with new ARM processor designed for appliances
• The EC is questioning 5 telecom operators on standardization