Import-ant Updates - These Weeks in Firefox: Issue 201

[Katherine Patenio]

Hello firefox-dev,

We have another round of Firefox Desktop engineering updates to send out this week. All notes are from our April 14th meeting and are summarized below. Happy reading!

Special thanks to Mike Conley for helping me put these headlines together.

Highlights

• Import attributes will be supported for WebExtensions, starting in Firefox 150!

• This allows WebExtension authors to import CSS module scripts and JSON into their JavaScript modules.

• Examples:

• import sheet from './styles.css' assert { type: 'css' };

• import schema from "./policies-schema.json" with { type: "json" };

• The Web Serial API is now available for testing in Firefox Nightly!

• See https://fosstodon.org/@balloob/116398481380578311 for more details on how to test this our yourself.

• Dharma created a new quick action for Firefox Library

• You can test this out in Firefox Nightly 151 by typing “library” in the URL bar

• Screenshot

• Alt text: Word "library" typed out in the URL bar to see the Firefox Library quick action

• Alexandre Poirot [:ochameau] Enabled the JS Tracer DevTool by default on Nightly

• Read up on how to use the JS Tracer to analyze JavaScript usage on the web here

Friends of the Firefox team

Resolved bugs (excluding employees)

Script to find new contributors from bug list

Volunteers that fixed more than one bug

• Chris Vander Linden

• Chukwuka Rosemary

• DrSeed

• EJiro Oghenekome

• Frédéric Wang Nélar

• Itoro James

• japandi

• John Iweh

• jonathancabera

• Josh Aas

• Justin Peter

• Keji Bakare

• kofoworola shonuyi

• konyhéa

• Noble Chinonso

• Okhuomon Ajayi

• Oluwatobi

• Pranjali Srivastava

• ROSHAAN

• Sameeksha

New contributors (🌟 = first patch)

• 🌟 Ben: UI issue in AST locale in Responsive design mode > (open Device picker) > Edit List... > Add Custom Device

• Brian Tsoi [:btsoi]: Create a badram checking library

• 🌟 Chidimma Okoloigwe: Port over tests in browser/base/content/test/sidebar

• japandi:

• 🌟Use cenum for nsIHelperAppLauncherDialog reason constants to enable better typescript annotations

• The height of the pinned tabs area should be responsive to the number of pins

• Tab notes should not be saved when input contains only spaces

• Nathan Johnson [:narjoDev]: Remove browser.display.use_system_colors pref

• DrSeed:

• 🌟Remove the defaultLauncherVisible Nimbus variable

• Firefox shows vertical tabs in new windows despite "Hide tabs and sidebar" setting

• The "Expand sidebar on hover" option is not kept after the vertical tabs are disabled and enabled again

• EJiro Oghenekome:

• 🌟Tests required for view>sidebar menu items

• Remove old sidebar icons no longer and replace with new.

• Rename SidebarController.initializeUIState() and SidebarState.loadInitialState()

• Keji Bakare:

• 🌟 Hide "Open Link in Split View" menu option for pinned tabs

• The right tab name and icon slightly move when the Split View is selected

• Split view's focus-outline is clipped on the right side of left tab

• 🌟 gotyaoi: Reload toolbar button is active on about:newtab

• 🌟 Hailia: Copied profile edit page heading should enclose profile name in quotes

• geppy: Rename --theme-graphs-* CSS variables

• Itoro James:

• 🌟 [FxMS Docs] Document the feature callout anchor selector's ::%shadow% token

• [A11y][Keyboard Navigation]Cancelling a note via Keyboard Navigation still saves it

• John Iweh:

• 🌟 The notification dot is not displayed if the tab is in a Split View

• sidebar-shown attribute remains when sidebar.revamp is false

• jonathancabera:

• 🌟 A Note with long text (1003 characters) is saved by pressing ENTER even if the "Save" button is disabled

• Tab group guide line becomes disconnected under certain conditions related to split views in vertical tab mode

• Aloys: Remove logic that forces distribution language packs to be reinstalled when upgrading from Firefoxes older than 67

• Mary cathline: Tab Group Label does not respect touch density in vertical tab bar

• 🌟 Brandon Lucier: Popups opened with window.open give window type normal instead of popup

• karan68: [dialog] New Shortcut dialog needs a label/accessible name

• 🌟 Osoble: Update font size and weight for synced tabs device name headers in Firefox View

• konyhéa:

• 🌟 don't restrict the sidebar width so much (to better support non-English locales)

• Add hairline separators between synced tabs device lists on the Recent Browsing page in Fx View

• Firefox View breakpoint for collapsing the sidebar triggers too late

• Split view does not show colored outline when used as a group target during dragging

• Noble Chinonso:

• 🌟 Add the 'command' property to the SidebarStateProps definition

• Timestamp not displayed for items under "Tabs from other devices" in Firefox View Next tab

• Move tab to Start/ End options are enabled and not working, even if the Split View tab is already at start/en,d and the other view is focused

• Mismatched closing tag in syncedtabs-tab-list.mjs itemTemplate

• Do not capitilize "tagName" returned from "WebDriver:GetElementTagName" command

• #shouldHandleEvent in SidebarTreeView.js compares event.keyCode to string values, causing Home/End keys to never be handled

• Knot False: Remove nsIScriptableUnicodeConverter from services/common/utils.js

• Pranjali Srivastava:

• 🌟Remove virtualizer pref

• Add a test to verify that the space above tabs is consistent across PB, LWT and sizemode (where appropriate)

• In the about:opentabs page the containers icons have no padding on the right side while hovered

• Okhuomon Ajayi:

• More spacing is needed between the tab note icon and the close icon on the tab

• Split view container and vertical tabs are misaligned when resizing the sidebar down

• Vertical split view tabs can be too big or small when tabs are overflowing

• 🌟 Rishan: Fix duplicated arrow function in browser_history_sidebar.js

• Chukwuka Rosemary:

• 🌟 Remove the max-history-rows pref used in Fx View

• "Forget About This Site" context menu option missing from Firefox View history

• Long strings are not displayed properly on the about:opentabs page search filed

• Add test for Forget This Site option in Fxview history context menu.

• ROSHAAN:

• 🌟 Tab note background colour is incorrect for default light theme

• [win/linux] The splitter between content areas does not match Figma spec

• Fix typo in OpenInTabsUtils.confirmOpenInTabs()

• Sameeksha:

• 🌟 Remove redundant lazy pref getters in SidebarPinsPromo

• Dialog lacks accessible name (Recent activity section > ••• disclosure > Delete from History dialog)

• kofoworola shonuyi:

• Actually hide or remove sidebar-shown attribute when in fullscreen.

• <sidebar-main> has "sidebar-ongoing-animations" set but never removed

• Add a test for checking sidebar-shown attribute in fullscreen mode

• 🌟 Sayd Mateen: Page URL is displayed as tab name when page's <title> contains about:reader?

• Oluwatobi:

• 🌟 Remove the IE importer and tests

• Unable to delete selected history entries from sidebar

• The city name heading level doesn't follow the correct heading level order

Project Updates

Add-ons / Web Extensions

Addon Manager & about:addons

• Removed obsolete migration logic that forced distribution language packs to be reinstalled when upgrading from Firefox versions older than 67 - Bug 2000797

• Thanks to Aloys for contributing the changes needed to cleanup this old XPIProvider migration logic

WebExtensions Framework

• Fixed a regression where WebRTC permission popups were queued and suppressed while an extension popup was open - Bug 1982832

WebExtension APIs

• Fixed an edge case where tabs.move would revert splitview tabs order while moving splitview tab to a new window  - Bug 2028832

• Fixed windows API reporting window type normal instead of popup for windows opened via window.open() - Bug 2030631

• Thanks to Brandon Lucier for contributing this small but very much appreciated fix to the windows WebExtensions API!

DevTools

• Nicolas Chevobbe [:nchevobbe] added support for multi-conditions @container rules in the Inspector (#2023125), add specific style for unmatched conditions (#2030236) 

• Screenshot

• Alt text: Multi containers support in the Inspector panel

• Nicolas Chevobbe [:nchevobbe] added container-name in the @container tooltip (#2030731)

• Screenshot 1

• Alt text: "hello section-container" name displayed in the container tooltip under the Inspector panel

• Screenshot 2

• Alt text: An unmatched container rule in the Inspector panel

WebDriver

• Henrik Skupin fixed a bug in the WebDriver BiDi session.new command where an empty proxy object was returned in the capabilities when no proxy was requested, even though that is not valid according to the CDDL.

• Henrik Skupin landed support for browser.setClientWindowState, originally started by Dan and continued by Liam DeBeasi, with final fixes and improvements completed after earlier contributors were unable to continue.

• Alexandra Borovova improved the "text" field of the "log.entryAdded" event to better align with Firefox DevTools behavior and Google Chrome WebDriver BiDi implementation.

Lint, Docs and Workflow

• A problem with the ESLint-build builder has been resolved. This had meant that the valid-ci-uses and valid-services-property rules were not being run.

• Work is ongoing to get various css files passing the use-design-tokens rules.

New Tab Page

• You can preview Nova on the New Tab browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.nova.enabled to true, and then opening a few tabs.

• The browser.nova.enabled pref was just introduced to turn on the Nova design tokens. That’s still very much a work in progress.

Picture-in-Picture

• aoia7rz7l for added PiP wrapper captions support to various public Invidious instances

• chutten removed all legacy PiP telemetry

• sfarre is working on PiP API support and has a patch up integrating it nicely with our native implementation

Search and Urlbar

Search

• Mandy updated the search-config-v2 schema for partnerCodes (2027191)

• Florian fixed a high frequency intermittent test failure in the search code (2009494)

• Standard8 fixed a bug with duplicate keywords for search engines, so that we now prefer the default search engine (2024714)

Nova

• mconley made a rounder search input for about:newtab and about:privatebrowsing (2027144)

• Drew is continuing his work on making Nova updates to the urlbar  (2026859)

New searchbar

• Moritz and Dao continue re-implementing the search bar using urlbar modules  (2027749, 2027578, 2002834, 2025904, 2027565)

Urlbar

• Dharma also fixed a quick action telemetry error (1955058)

• James has been working on Adaptive History for Autofill Improvements (2019695, 2019695, 2021079, 2019719, 2021036, 2028730, 2021039, 2019626)

• Gijs landed a patch so that we use aria-notify instead of A11yUtils.announce for UrlbarView’s “special” announcements (2026753)

• Dale added a tooltip to engines in the unified search panel (2028668)

• Drew has been working on sports suggestions (2025052)

• James fixed a bug where persisted search was not working for Fx versions prior to 148 (2025933)

Smart Window

• preparing for 150 mvp with various uplifts from 151

• telemetry: assistant 2024869, input/suggestions 2009615, MLtelemetry 2019772, settings 2009612

• security: spotlighting 2020807, url ledger 2023001

• polish: autoopen sidebar pref 2029686, memories strings 2029262, report issues link 2029257

• bugs: keeping conversations when switching windows 2026239, switching tabs 2023284, transition fullpage to sidebar 2024781

• a11y: ask button state 2015485, smartbar announce 2016758

Storybook/Reusable Components/Acorn Design System

• From more than two weeks ago (sorry I wasn’t here and forget if they were shared):

• Finn converted the Settings page nav to match Firefox View/new design Bug 1867385

• Mark S imported the initial Nova design from Figma Bug 2021477 

• Currently behind browser.design-tokens.nova but moving to browser.nova.enabled today most likely

• Mark S created an Icon Directory in Storybook - Bug 1990228

• Mark Striemer added breadcrumbs to sub-panes in Settings

• Anna Kulyk fixed arrow keys not working with panel-list variant of moz-select with separators

• Mark Kennedy fixed an display issue with the Applications view not updating when cancelling the Use other option

• Finn Terdal fixed some page navigation issues:page nav leaves a large gap when it first collapses to icon-only, sub-pane content being clipped by sticky search bar, reintroduced the vertical border next to static sidebar in prefers-reduced-motion

• Jules Simplicio landed a UI polish pass for the Settings Redesign with spacing, focus-ring, and contrast tweaks across subpanes, improving readability and target sizes.

• This also updated some global styling for card, message bar, text input border radiuses/colors and the moz-promo component got a refactor with better support for image styling by default

• Hanna Jones updated copy and illustrations for the Account and sync page, so it’s ready for SRD release

• Osmond Arnesto converted urlbar variables to design tokens, preparing for JSON conversion and Nova import from Figma

• Jon Oliver converted tab variables into design tokens, and set them up in JSON for Nova import from Figma

• Jules Simplicio has been updating variable names in the Figma Nova Components/Styles files so our design token naming is consistent between Figma and central (so we can run our import script for more Nova automation)

UX Fundamentals

• Felt Privacy error pages now support more NSS errors instead of falling through to the legacy page. Updated introductory text for the denied-port-access error. - 2024150

• Fixed a test in browser_aboutCertError.js that was failing on Linux opt standalone and removed the platform skip. - 2028651

• Added clock skew detection to the Felt Privacy error pages. When a certificate error is caused by a wrong system clock, the Felt Privacy error pages now show the same dedicated clock-skew message that the legacy error pages had, and helps guide users to correct their system time. - 2025049

• Fixed misaligned bullet points in the "What can you do?" section of Felt Privacy network error pages, restoring correct visual indentation for that list. - 2028632

Below the fold

• General triage

• Chris DuPuis, Stephanie Cunnane and Punam Dahiya are this month’s Firefox / Toolkit :: General triagers!

--

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,

kpatenio