Photon Engineering Newsletter #7

[Justin Dolske]

(via
https://dolske.wordpress.com/2017/06/22/photon-engineering-newsletter-7/ )

Lucky you, here’s Photon update #7
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven-layer_dip>!

Let’s start off with a fresh new video that gives an overview of what we’re
doing with the Quantum and Photon projects. If you’re not already running
Nightly <https://www.mozilla.org/nightly>, but are willing to live on the
cutting-edge, this would be a great time to give it a spin! Get involved to
help us test out everything that’s new, and experience some of these great
improvements first-hand!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJG278nX6dM

Mozilla All-Hands

Next week, everyone at Mozilla will be gathering in San Francisco for our
biannual All-Hands meeting. The Photon team will be using it as a repeat of
our Toronto Work Week (as covered in Photon Update #2
<https://dolske.wordpress.com/2017/05/23/photon-engineering-newsletter-2/>).
So we’re going to be super-busy hacking on Photon. We’ve got even more
great stuff coming up, and I can’t wait to talk about it in Photon Update
#8. But… The intense focus means that I might not get that update out until
the following week. I think the wait will be worth it. 🙂


Recent Changes

Menus/structure:

- As mentioned in the last update
<https://dolske.wordpress.com/2017/06/15/photon-engineering-newsletter-6/>,
the Photon menus/structure pref has been enabled by default
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1372309> on Nightly. We’ve
had a number of issues filed by Nightly users (thanks for the bug
reports!), and fortunately the were no huge surprises. As a bonus, Talos
reported performance wins from the new menus.
- The library panel now has a “View Pocket List” item
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1354534> and looks more
polished <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1370580>. The
synced tabs view also got a small update
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1365663>.
- Subviews in menu panels now scroll correctly
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1369095> when necessary.
(You can see this, for example, in the History view when you have lots of
history entries.)
- Coming soon: more updates to the library panel
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1354159>, page action panel
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1374477>, and moving the
bookmarks star (back) to the URL bar
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1352120>.



Animation:

- Updated arrow-panel animations
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1352075> are going through
review this week.
- Users on macOS will notice that panel open/close animations are much
smoother, as a result of a platform fix
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1291457>. (You’ll see more
improvements soon, from the item above, as well as another platform fix
<http://1348294> to add a beautiful background blur to the panel).
- Work continues on animations for the downloads toolbar button,
stop/reload button, and page loading indicator.



Preferences:

- The revised reorganization
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1365133> is actively being
worked on, and is undergoing review this week.
- Search in preferences was enabled by default in Nightly.
- Searching now highlights matching menuitems
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1370491> with an arrow,
and works inside subdialogs
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1363721>.



Visual redesign:

- Another community contribution: Oriol removed an small, unexpected line
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1372289> that was
appearing at the top of some windows. Thanks for the patch!
- Firefox will now automatically enable
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1355771> its touch mode
(which increases the size of various UI to make it more touch-friendly)
when used in Windows 10 Tablet mode.
- The dark toolbar that previously landed for Windows 10 is now coming
to macOS <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1367385>. (This
just landed, and if it sticks will be in Friday’s Nightly build.)
[image: Screen Shot 2017-06-22 at 4.27.25 PM]



Onboarding:

- The onboarding tour content has landed and been polished
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1370459> to match the UI
spec. You can click the Fox icon in about:home to give it a try! Currently
it has 5 tours for existing (non-Photon) features — Private Browsing,
Add-ons, Customization, Searching, and setting your Default Browser. These
are planned to ship in Firefox 56 (for users installing Firefox for the
first time). Additional tours will next be implemented for Firefox 57, to
introduce new Photon features to existing Firefox users.
- The onboarding tour now has UI to allow hiding it
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1357020> (so users who
don’t want to go through each tour step can just make it go away).
- The Mozilla logo and onboarding icon are now shown on the correct sides
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1371201> for RTL languages.
- A Sync tour and tour notifications will be landing soon.



Performance:

- Places (our bookmarks and history storage system) is now initialized
after first paint <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1371710>
on startup. This helps make Firefox feel faster to launch, because the
window will be shown sooner.
- More giant patches up for review for removal of Task.jsm calls
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1374282>, and fixed the
last blocker to starting work on removing Promise.jsm usage
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1368456>.
- More awesome work on improving Talos measurements and figuring out
regressions. (Particularly some issues that have been holding up
animations.)
- Florian posted in firefox-dev
<https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/firefox-dev/2017-June/005510.html>
about the browser_startup.js test, and asked everybody to have a look at
the generated list to identify low hanging fruit. This test helps us find
code that is loading too early, and prevents things from regressing once we
fix it.



Thus concludes Photon update #7. As noted above, next week is going to be a
little busy, so it may be a couple of weeks until the next update.


Justin