Firefox Headlines (May 14th, 2021)

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Doug Thayer

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May 14, 2021, 11:09:40 AM5/14/21
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Good morning (or whatever time it is where you are), Firefox fans! We have another update for you. Every two weeks the Firefox teams get together to share the juiciest updates to our beloved browser. Afterwards, a few of us stick around and compile the notes to send out to you lovely folks. So without further ado, here are those notes!

Highlights

  • Firefox 89 introduces a fresh new look and feel!

    • Floating tabs!

    • Streamlined menus!

    • New icons!

    • Better dark mode support!

    • Improved context menus on Mac and Windows

    • Improved perceived startup performance on Windows

    • Native context menus and rubberbanding/overscroll on macOS

    • Refreshed modals dialogs and notification bars!

    • More details in these release notes and in this early review from laptopmag

  • Non-native form controls are slated to ride out in Firefox 89 as well

    • This lays the groundwork for improving the sandboxing of the content processes by shutting off access to native OS widget drawing routines

  • (Experimental, and en-US Nightly only) Users will now get unit conversions directly in the URL bar! Users can type “5 lbs to kg” and see a copy/paste friendly result instantaneously.

Friends of the Firefox team

For contributions from April 20 2021 to May 4 2021, inclusive.

Introductions/Shout-Outs

Resolved bugs (excluding employees)
Fixed more than one bug

  • Falguni Islam

  • Itiel

  • kaira [:anshukaira]

  • Kajal Sah

  • Luz De La Rosa

  • Richa Sharma

  • Sebastian Zartner [:sebo]

  • Vaidehi

New contributors (🌟 = first patch)

Project Updates

Add-ons / Web Extensions

Addon Manager & about:addons

  • Starting from Firefox 90, when no extensions are installed  our about:addons page will show to the users a nicer message to explicitly direct them to addons.mozilla.org  instead of an empty list of installed extensions (Bug 1561538) - Thanks to Samuel Grasse-Haroldsen for fixing this polishing issue.

  • As part of the ongoing work to get rid of OS.File usage, Barret unveiled and fixed some races in AddonManager and XPIDatabase jsm (Bug 1702116)

  • Fixed a macOS specific issue in the “Manager Extension Shortcuts” about:addons view, which was preventing this view from detecting some of the conflicting shortcuts (Bug 1565854)

WebExtensions Framework
WebExtension APIs

  • Nicolas Chevobbe applied the needed changes to ensure that the devtools.inspectedWindow.reload method is Fission compatible also when an extension does pass to it the userAgent option (Bug 1706098)

Fission

  • Neil has been working on reviving the tab unloader for when users are hitting memory limits

    • It’s smarter this time though, and should hopefully make better choices on which tabs to unload.

    • Currently disabled by default, but Nightly users can test it by setting `browser.tabs.unloadOnLowMemory` to `true`

Messaging System

Performance

Performance Tools

  • Stacks now include the category color of each stack frame (in tooltips, marker table, sidebar)

  • Fixed a bug where the dot markers appear in the wrong places.

Search and Navigation

  • Lots of polish fixes to Proton address bar (and search bar)

  • The Search Mode chiclet can now be closed also when the address bar is unfocused - Bug 1701901

  • Address bar results action text (for example “Switch to tab”, or “Search with Engine”) won’t be pushed out of the visible area by long titles anymore - Bug 1707839

  • Double dots in domain-looking strings will now be corrected - Bug 1580881

Screenshots

Below the fold

  • [gijs] CSS `ch` units depend on the device pixel rendering of the `0` character in the font, font-size and DPI scaling. So the CSS `px` outcome of something like `50ch` can easily vary by 30px between DPI scaling (with identical font size + font), if the font forces glyphs to be rendered in line with device pixels. Unless you’re dealing with monospace text, it’s probably better to use `em` for font-size-related sizing.

  • [gijs] CSS selectors: `:root:-moz-lwtheme` works but `:host:-moz-lwtheme` does not, you want `:host(:-moz-lwtheme)`.

  • [gijs] As of October 2020, you can split `skip-if` and `fail-if` annotations in test manifests (browser.ini, mochitest.ini, etc.) across lines! This is equivalent to separating with `||` but makes it easier to read multiple conditions. E.g.:

        skip-if = os == “win” || os == “linux

    Is equivalent to:

        skip-if =
            os == “win” # fails because X
            os == “linux” # fails because Y



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 I'm really just synthesizing and humanizing 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,


Doug Thayer

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