Firefox/Planning/2013-04-10

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Planning Meeting Details

• Wednesdays - 11:00am PT, 18:00 UTC
• Mountain View Offices: Warp Core Conference Room
• Toronto Offices: Finch Conference Room
• irc.mozilla.org #planning for backchannel
• (the developer meeting takes place on Tuesdays)

Video/Teleconference Details - NEW

• 650-903-0800 or 650-215-1282 x92 Conf# 99696 (US/INTL)
• 1-800-707-2533 (pin 369) Conf# 99696 (US)
• Vidyo Room: ProductCoordination
• Vidyo Guest URL

REMEMBER

These notes are read by people who weren't able to attend the meeting. Please make sure to include links and context so they can be understood.

Schedule & Progress on Upcoming Releases

Firefox Desktop

Current Releases

• 20.0.1 windows only dot release has gone to build and is on track for release tomorrow
  • Bugs Addressed - bug 846848,bug 857588,bug 857672,bug 857291

Beta (128)

• FF21.0b2 for Desktop was released yesterday
  • Support for Social multi provider - (Mixi, Cliqz, MSN Now)
• FF21.0b2 for mobile is with QA and will be released before end of week

Aurora (54)

• FF22.0a2 - Updates were unthrottled last Friday, looks good

Market Insights from the Product Marketing Strategy Team

Desktop / Platform

Google

• Google forked WebKit creating a new engine called Blink. While Google is able to remove "7 build systems, more than 7,000 files and 4.5 million lines", the WebKit community is also cleaning house.
  • Over the last year, Google contributors made around half of commits to WebKit, so the WebKit community is now in the process of reprioritizing and identifying code areas that are now unmaintained. Significant portions of the WebKit codebase that require new owners include the Web Inspector, File System API and CSS Variables.
  • Google posted a video where lead developers answer community questions about Blink. Google says they "have no plans" to change the format of the user agent string.
  • Opera has confirmed that it will use Blink. Yandex's browser will as well.
  • Google's Alex Russell blogged about how it will allow the Chrome web platform development team to iterate faster. Justin Schuh described the security features that will likely be coming.
• Chrome 27 Beta was released. Web content appears 5% faster, the Chromium team now uses benchmarks from webpagetest.org in their testing, a "simple, elegant user interface" for month, week, and date <input> types, live, low-latency audio support for the Web Audio API, the Sync FileSystem API for Chrome Apps, and other improvements.
• Chrome now has a regularly-updated, detailed, feature dashboard for web platform work.
• Chrome for Android now syncs passwords and autofill entries for logged-in users.
• In likely effort to better support emerging markets with poorer bandwidth, select videos on YouTube are now available at a 144p pixel video resolution

Microsoft

• Microsoft released [www.computerworld.com/s/article/9238278/Microsoft_takes_new_Scroogled_shot_at_Google another attack] in its "Scroogled" campaign, describing how the Google Play store passes users' personal information to app developers.

Mobile

• Facebook Home was released.
  • An app that extends into a whole phone experience, similar to a launcher, but with deep social integration, the product will be pre - installed on the HTC First.
  • It is available to install on a limited number of high - end devices (HTC One X, Samsung Galaxy S III, Samsung Galaxy Note II).
  • Analysts estimate that Facebook Home is available to 10 - 15% of the current Android install base and with added support for Android 4 and later it can have an addressable base of over 50% of Android. Facebook's current mobile user base was 29% on iOS and 38% on Android in December 2012, so analysts estimate that Home will be available to 20 - 25% of the current Facebook mobile user base and assuming Android v4 support it could reach 45 - 50%.

• Microsoft, Nokia, and a number of top developers have filed a formal complaint to the European Union against Google's use of its apps in Android. The accusation is of using Android " as a deceptive way to build advantages for key Google apps in 70 percent of the smartphones shipped today". This comes at a time when the European Union is in the final stages of an inquiry into the search offering of the company.

• New version distribution numbers for Android put Gingerbread at 39.8%, Ice Cream Sandwich at 29.3% and Jelly Bean at 25%. The next version of Android, Key Lime Pie, is expected to be unveiled at Google I/O in May.

• Today, an average US consumer spends 2 hours and 38 min a day on a phone or tablet, according to Flurry Analytics. 80% of the time is spent on apps and 20% (31 minutes) is spent on the Web. Games are the largest category in terms of time spent (32%), followed by Facebook with 18%. On iOS, the browser, Safari, comes on the third place, with 12%.

• The Google Play Store was re - designed to optimize for discovery of entertainment content.