Blair’s Brain And Other Unfocused Things

Status update

Sadly, I missed the the Mozilla Corp All-Hands last week in Mountain View, due to a nasty flu bug (bad timing, I know). But I hear it was pretty awesome - photos here. See everyone next time!

Tab matches in Awesomebar

Status

• Various UI bugs fixed
• Discussion on improving the UI further
• Fixed bitrot from changes made in bug 527311 (that was a "fun" merge)
• Made some toolkit code less specific to just tab-matches
• Unit tests (and debugging existing tests - caught some weird behavior)

Loose ends

• UI still not finalized. Might need to land on trunk and tweak UI in followup bugs (assuming review goes smoothly¹)

Next steps

• UI adjustments
• Finish tweaking matching code
• Review

Target for next week

• Make tab-matching dependent on autocompletesearchparam attribute (current it's a global pref)
• Some small changes to matching behavior (some assumptions changed after seeing some tests fail)
• More UI tweaking/experimentation
• Code review (regardless of whether UI is finalized or not)

Miscellaneous

• Fixed about:jetpack on trunk (bug 534384), awaiting review
• Finally got a patch up for bug 397937 (view-source for safebrowsing blocked pages), awaiting review

Reflections

• Missing an All-Hands due to sickness sucks.
• My co-workers rock - they somehow manage to look out for me when I'm sick, even from the other side of the world. Thanks guys :)
• Teaching is the greatest way to learn

Status update

Tab matches in Awesomebar

Status

• RTL issues looked into (with possible solution) - poses an interesting UI challenge
• Fixed issue where session restored tabs weren't recorded as being open
• Various other bugs fixed
• Some tests written

Loose ends

• Need UX eyes on the RTL problem

Next steps

• Fix any remaining bugs
• More tests
• Go back over feedback
• Code review

Target for next week

• Fix rare issue with tag-matches showing "Switch to tab" instead of a list of tags
• More unit tests
• Initial code review, depending on feedback

Binding for untrusted text in security dialogs

No change.

Reflections

• A failing test breaks any previous assumptions. Therefore it brings both the code and the test into question.

Status update

Tab matches in Awesomebar

Status

• Took an alternative (more complete, less hacky) approach to autocomplete integration, which took a lot longer. This way should allow easy ranking for tab-only matches.

Loose ends

• None

Next steps

• Finish autocomplete work
• Unit tests
• Preferences UI

Target for next week

• Finish autocomplete
• Unit tests

Binding for untrusted text in security dialogs

Status

• Initial planning
• Identified potential issues with implementing in only JS

Loose ends

• None

Next steps

• More research - especially into unmatched surrogates in UTF-16

Target for next week

• A better understanding of surrogates

Miscellaneous

• 519486 resurrected itself in some (new) popular lightweight themes - looking at ways to further improve the solution.

Reflections

• A hack can save time now, cost time later, and still be worth it.
• Beautiful code is not always useful code.

Status update

Bit of a weird week - very busy, but not a lot of coding.

Tab matches in Awesomebar

Status

• UI works better now
• Initial work on proper integration into nsPlacesAutocomplete

Loose ends

• None

Next steps

• Finish autocomplete work
• Preferences UI
• More unit tests
• More unit tests
• More unit tests

Target for next week

• Finish autocomplete work + preferences UI

Binding for untrusted text in security dialogs

Status

• No change

Miscellaneous

• Had my first day as a Sheriff on Tuesday - worked out pretty well
• Also had my first security review on Tuesday, for the Plugin Update Awareness project  - that went pretty well too
• New Windows box arrived on Wednesday - now running Windows 7 as my main OS
• Working on moving all my development over to Windows

Reflections

• Having the right tools can make a difficult job into a trivial job
• Pizza and coffee are always the right tools

Status update

Tab matches in Awesomebar

Status

• Refactored
• Experimented with strategies for implementing different UIs in the URL bar

Loose ends

• Should tab matches be weighted differently? Need to experiment & discuss

Next steps

• Solidify UI work
• Flesh out autocomplete matching behaviour
• Experiment with weighting tab matches

Target for next week

• Implement keyword & mode to match only tabs

Binding for untrusted text in security dialogs

Status

• No change

Reflections

• When life gives you lemons... give life to Lemonstein!

Status update

My cat ate my homework last week. So this week you get double update goodness.

Tab matches in Awesomebar

Status

• Started working on project
• Read through a lot of previous work and feedback
• Proof-of-concept code done, matching Limi's design

Loose ends

• None

Next steps

• Turn proof-of-concept into a real patch

Target for next week

• Refactored
• Start proper integration into places autocomplete and related prefs

Binding for untrusted text in security dialogs

Status

• Started working on project (low priority)
• Read background information

Loose ends

• None

Next steps

• Gather more information

Target for next week

• Discussions with Jesse and Johnath

Miscellaneous

• More miscellaneous wanted bugs for 3.6 (and some not).
• Worked on patches for bugs 435726 and 397937, which have been a personal annoyance for a long time

Reflections

• Technology, like biology, has a word for stable: dead

(Quote from Mike Shaver)

Status update

Oops, forgot about last week's status update. Usually when that happens, I catch it on Monday; so the rest of the world sees it appear on Sunday. Anyway, here's last week. In retrospect, it was a much calmer week.

Plugin Update Awareness

Status

• Everything has smoothly landed on branch and will be in Beta 1
• Blogged about it - read it here if you haven't already
• Closed project

Miscellaneous

• Working on various blockers/wanted for 3.6

Reflections

• To learn is to live

Firefox 3.6 knows when your plugins are out of date

You may have noticed that both Firefox 3.5.3 and 3.0.14 will warn if an outdated version of the Abobe Flash Player plugin is installed.

Outdated Flash warning

This is because old versions of plugins can cause crashes and other stability problems, and can also be a significant security risk. But this was just one of the first important steps in providing a safer and more stable experience when using plugins.

Additionally, the awesome WebDev team have been developing a Plugin Check web page that will look at all your plugins, and warn you which ones are out of date and therefore potentially have security or stability issues. And since finding and installing an updated plugin can also be tedious, that page will also provides a link to the latest version of each outdated plugin. They're still testing to make sure the majority of plugins are detected correctly, so are asking for your help in testing it. You can help out and try it yourself, by visiting https://www.mozilla.com/plugincheck/

Firefox 3.6 will have this integrated to make sure users know when they have an outdated plugin installed, without having to manually visit the Plugin Check page. Whenever you load a page that uses a plugin that is out of date, you'll get this warning:

Clicking on "Update Plugins..." will bring you to the Plugin Check page. Additionally, the Plugins tab of the Extension Manager (Tools -> Add-ons) will indicate which of your plugins are out of date. You can also get to the Plugin Check page from there.

This is in the latest nightly builds of Firefox (trunk and branch), and will be in Beta 1. Since the Plugin Check page is still being tested, and not yet available via the main mozilla.com site, the URL that the nightly builds of Firefox have is to a non-existent page. This will of course be fixed once the Plugin Check page has had more testing.

Updated 30/10/09: Changed the URL for the Plugin Check page to point to the production-version.

Status update

Plugin Update Awareness

Status

• Landed on trunk
• Small fix needed in bug 520295 (awaiting review)

Loose ends

• Once the URL of the plugin update page is finalised, the pref may need updating (bug 520444)

Next steps

• Land bug 520295
• Fix/close bug 520444
• Land on branch
• ???
• Profit!!!

Target for next week

• Blog about this (hopefully today)
• Get everything landed on branch

Miscellaneous

Blockers/wanted fixed on trunk:

• 519486 - Some themes are illegible with the text shadow implementation
• 467601 - long bookmark names (page titles) will hide tagging icon and tags' text in location bar dropdown list (overlaps, covers up)
• 432213 - Bookmark dialog position incorrectly when bookmarking frame
• 468881 - Save Frame As… option appears when not necessary in File Menu

Reflections

• Mistakes are only bad if you fail to learn from them