QR Codes, Speed Calculators, Better RAM Usage - These Weeks in Firefox: Issue 199

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Mike Conley

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Apr 15, 2026, 4:45:33 PM (7 days ago) Apr 15
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Hello firefox-dev,

A few weeks ago, the Firefox Desktop team got together and compared notes on the latest happenings in the codebase. A few of us stuck around after the meeting to take those notes and turn them into something a little more palatable.

Special thanks to Katherine Patenio who put these notes together with me!

Highlights

  • Thanks to overholt, macOS Nightly now has support for sharing the current tab’s URL via QR Code (Right-click tab, Share > Generate QR Code). This is held to Nightly for now.

    • [Screenshot]

      • Caption: A Firefox dialog titled “QR Code” displaying a large QR code with a Firefox Nightly logo in the center. Below the code is the URL “https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/”. At the bottom are “Save” and “Copy” buttons, and a close (X) button appears in the top-right corner of the dialog.

  • Scott Downe fixed an issue where newtab background GIFs could max out RAM while idle in the background by throttling animated background decoding on backgrounded tabs. This fix is going out in Firefox 150.

  • Special thanks to volunteer contributor 1justinpeter who just added speed unit conversion support to the AwesomeBar!

    • You can try it in Nightly - try 1000 km/h to m/s

      • [Screenshot]

        • Caption: The Firefox address bar showing a unit conversion query “1000 km/h to m/s.” A dropdown displays the option to search with Google and a calculated result of “277.7777777778 m/s.”

    • This is tentatively slated to go out in Firefox 150

  • New Tab Sections have been enabled by default in Canada!

    • [Screenshot]

      • Caption: Firefox New Tab page showing categorized content sections titled “Money” and “Parenting.” Each section contains a grid of article cards with images, headlines, and sources. The “Money” section includes finance and investment-related articles from sources like BNN Bloomberg, Toronto Star, and Financial Post. The “Parenting” section includes articles about family and lifestyle topics from sources like Good Housekeeping, The Cut, Parents Canada, and Slate. Each section includes a “Follow” button in the top-right corner

Friends of the Firefox team

Resolved bugs (excluding employees)

Volunteers that fixed more than one bug

  • Chris Vander Linden

  • Itiel

  • Justin Peter

  • Khalid AlHaddad

  • Mauro V [:cheff]

  • Sam Johnson

  • Sebastian Zartner [:sebo]

New contributors (🌟 = first patch)

Project Updates

Add-ons / Web Extensions

WebExtensions Framework

  • Fixed a structuredClone regression in the MV2 userScripts sandbox, bringing it in line with the fix already applied to content scripts and MV3 userScripts sandboxes, fix applied in Nightly 150 and uplifted to Beta 149 - Bug 2020773

  • Fixed a tab crash triggered by calling Document.parseHTMLUnsafe() from a browser extension content script (due to an assertion failure hit because parseHTMLUnsafe was wrongly trying to create a document that belongs to the expanded privileged principal that originated the call). The changes applied is now making sure parseHTMLUnsafe will use the webpage document's principal (and prevent the crash as a side effect of that) - Bug 1912587

  • Fixed a regression where the load event on about:blank iframes would not fire when a content script injected a style element (regressed in Firefox 148 as a side effect of the changes applied by Bug 543435, fix landed in Nightly 140 and uplifted to Beta 149 and Release 148) - Bug 2020300

    • Thanks to Vincent Villa for promptly investigating and fixing this regression!

WebExtension APIs

  • As part of followups related to the work to allow action.openPopup calls without user activation, action.openPopup() will reject the requests when another panel, context menu, doorhanger, or notification is already open in the window - Bug 2022281

  • As part of followups to the work in support of the splitView mode support introduced in the tabs API, tabs.move() has been tweaked to correctly return all specified tabs moved in a split view - Bug 2022372

Addon Manager & about:addons

  • Fixed a rendering regression where the context menu on about:addons cards would appear with a transparent background at non-default zoom levels - Bug 2006926

    • Thanks to Botond Ballo for investigating and fixing this small rendering regression!

DevTools

WebDriver

Lint, Docs and Workflow

  • Mossop has replaced most instances of ContentTask.spawn with SpecialPowers.spawn.

    • There is a lint rule to prevent further uses.

    • Feel free to help clean up existing uses if you have any.

  • https://arewemozsrcyet.com/ is live and in the middle of being moved to a mozilla repo, bugs / comments can go to https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2014746 

    • [Screenshot]

      • Line chart titled “Are we moz-src:// yet?” showing the number of files over time from September 2025 to March 2026. The chart compares four categories: moz-src files (blue), extra JS modules (orange), preprocessed JS modules (green), and actors (red). moz-src files and actors steadily increase over time, reaching around 280 and 260 files respectively by March 2026. Extra JS modules remain much higher but relatively stable around 740–820 files, while preprocessed JS modules remain near zero.

New Tab Page

Search

  • Marco worked on replacing ContentTask.spawn in various tests @ 2023131, 2023134

  • Dale worked on several TrustPanel UX fixes @ 2017369, 2017376

  • Daisuke fixed issue with SwitchTab results with no title @ 2020341

  • Moritz worked on several telemetry issues relating to the new search bar 2021927

  • Moritz fixed the unified search button having no focus border @ 2023656

  • Dao added support for middle clicking to search in the unified search menu @ 2011220

Smart Window

  • “Beta” badges 2017667

    • [Screenshot]

      • Caption: Firefox window mode switcher menu showing two options: “Classic Window” and “Smart Window (Beta).” The Smart Window option is selected with a checkmark. In the background, the page header reads “Smart Window Beta” with a colorful star icon.

  • Added AI Controls integration, supporting the blocked state (2010599)

    • [Screenshot]

      • Caption: Firefox settings page under “AI Controls” showing the “Smart Window” feature labeled “New.” A description explains it can be used for questions, to compare pages, and to provide personalized suggestions. The Smart Window setting is set to “Blocked” via a dropdown. The left sidebar shows navigation items including Privacy & Security, Sync, AI Controls, Firefox Labs, and More from Mozilla.

  • Added more user choice with split memory generation (2017428)

    • [Screenshot]

      • Caption: Firefox settings section titled “Memories,” explaining that the browser can learn from user activity to personalize responses. Two options are enabled: “Learn from chats in Smart Window” and “Learn from browsing in Classic and Smart Windows.” A “Manage memories” option appears below with a navigation arrow.

  • Added chat search in Firefox View (2009070)

  • Follow-up prompts now persist across tab switches (2019696)

  • Conversation starter prompts now update with the foregrounded tab (2013657)

  • Current tab context is now removable (2018802)

  • Keyboard fixes for smartbar input (2019556 2017939 2015090)

  • Show sign in button in chat if signed out (2015720)

Storybook/Reusable Components/Acorn Design System

  • Tim Giles fixed some issues with panel-list using popover:

    • A macOS issue where keyboard events went to the wrong <moz-select>Bug 2017668

    • Scrolling now dismisses an open panel-listBug 2018563

  • akulyk updated the panel-list variant of moz-select to use role="combobox", improving screen reader semantics and keyboard navigation consistency.

  • Dustin Whisman updated the moz- widgets CSS to pass use-design-tokens:

  • Dustin Whisman updated some design token names for consistency (Bug 2013342):

    • --font-size-heading-* now a font-size variant (was --heading-font-size)

    • --card-border-color, --card-box-shadow, --card-box-shadow-hover, --popup-box-shadow, --tab-box-shadow (were nested as variants previously and now are under their component name)

UX Fundamentals

  • Added keyboard autofocus to the “Try Again” button in Felt Privacy error pages so users who land on an error page can immediately press enter to retry. (2021447)

  • Added keyboard access keys to the three primary error page buttons: G (Go Back), T (Try Again), and P (Proceed to Site). (404501)

  • In progress: refactoring net error illustrations into a shared object and adding alt text so assistive technology can read out meaningful descriptions. (2022033)

  • In progress: adding improved messaging to the file-not-found error page. (2018850)

  • In progress: restoring the error page for Work Offline mode so users see messaging that accurately reflects that they’re in Offline mode, not that there’s a network problem. (2021449)

Below the fold


This information, including all of the previous updates, are fully available in this doc: https://docs.google.com/a/mozilla.com/document/d/1u9YH3ULNRYg6G-fN-Udkvfkcvg0alJfzi_zIAfFNkL8/edit?usp=sharing


Also note that we’re really just synthesising and humanising the stuff that's on the Wiki, which is freely available from here: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Meeting, so check that out if you want the source material. It'll also be posted (minus the Below the Fold stuff) to the Nightly blog.


Finally, if there's a Firefox-ish team that you feel isn't being represented here, please let them know about the above meeting so we can get their updates.


Keep on rockin' the free web,


-Mike


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