Firefox 52 landed in Developer Edition this week, so we have another update on WebExtensions for you. WebExtensions are becoming the standard for add-on development in Firefox.

API Parity

The sessions API was added to Firefox, with sessions.getRecentlyClosed and sessions.restore APIs. These allow you to query for recently closed tabs and windows and then restore them.

The topSites API was added to Firefox. This allows extensions to query the top sites visited by the browser.

The omnibox API was added to Firefox. Although in Firefox the omnibox is called the Awesome Bar, we’ve kept the naming the same so that extensions can easily port between Chrome and Firefox. The API allows extensions to register a unique keyword for providing their own suggestions to the Awesome Bar. The extension will be able to provide suggestions whenever its registered keyword is typed into the Awesome Bar.

Screenshot of an extension which registered the keyword ‘dxr’ for searching the Firefox source code.

The storage.sync API is now ready for testing, but not yet ready for full deployment. This API relies on a back-end service provided by Mozilla to sync add-on data between devices or re-installs. It is most commonly used to store add-on preferences that should be preserved.

Until the main production service is set up, you can test out storage.sync by making a few preference changes. To sync add-on data, a user will need to be logged into a Firefox Account. There is a limit of 100KB in the amount of data that can be stored. Before data is stored on our server, all data is encrypted in the client. By the time Firefox 52 goes into Beta we plan to have a production service ready to go. At that point we hope to remove the need to set preferences and switch users to the new servers.

Some existing APIs have also been improved. Some of the more significant bugs include:

• The addition of browser.runtime.onInstalled and browser.runtime.onStartup which are commonly used to initialize data or provide the user with more information about the extension.
• You can now match and attach content scripts to iframes with about:blank source, which are often used for inserting ads around the web.
• The manifest file now supports developer information and falls back to the author if appropriate.
• The commands API now supports _execute_browser_action, which allows you to easily map a command to synthesize a click on your browser action.
• Bookmark events have been implemented, providing the onRemoved, onMoved, onCreated and onChanged events.

New APIs

Recently, contextual identities were added to Firefox, and these are now exposed to WebExtensions as well, in the tabs and cookie APIs. As an example, the following will query every tab in the current window and then open up a new tab at the same URL with the same contextual identity:

let tabs = browser.tabs.query({currentWindow: true});
tabs.then(tabs => {
  for (let tab of tabs) {
    browser.tabs.create({
      url: tab.url, cookieStoreId:
      tab.cookieStoreId
    });
  }
});

This API is behind the same browser preference that the rest of the contextual identity code is, privacy.userContext.enabled. We expect the API to track that preference for the moment.

You can now suspend and resume requests using the webRequest API. This allows extensions to suspend requests, perform asynchronous checks if necessary, then resume or cancel the request when appropriate, without blocking the parent process.

Out of process extensions

The work to run extensions out of process continues, with multiple changes being made across the APIs to support this. If you are developing an extension using the WebExtensions API then this change should have no effect on you. If you are planning to develop a WebExtensions API, maybe using experiments, or committing into mozilla-central, then please check the documentation for what you need to know.

Examples

The WebExtensions examples repository keeps growing, currently standing at 26 examples. Recent additions include:

• window-manipulator demonstrates the windows API.
• cookie-bg-picker demonstrates the cookies API.
• emoji-substitution uses a content script to alter the text of websites.
• tabs-tabs-tabs now demonstrates switching, removing and zooming tabs.
• selection-to-clipboard demonstrates copying highlighted text into the clipboard.

All the examples have been altered to use the browser namespace and promises instead of the chrome namespace. The MDN documentation has also been updated to reflect this change.

Web-ext

Web-ext is the command line tool for developing WebExtensions quickly and easily. There were versions 1.5 and 1.6 of web-ext released. Significant changes include:

• sign can now use a proxy.
• build uses the locale when generating a file name.
• --firefox-binary has been shortened to --firefox.

New contributors

Over this release, we’ve had our largest influx of new contributors ever. A shout out to all the awesome contributors who have helped make this happen including the following:

• For web-ext changes: Jostein Kjonigsen, Shubheksha Jalan, saintsebastian, Berrak Nil Boya, Himanshu Aggarwal
• For WebExtensions examples changes: Xue Fuqiao, Peter Banjo, Rahul Yesantharao, Fl'avio da Silva Rodrigues Almeida, Nick Stathas, Kartik Gupta, Rafael Capaci, Andrew Terranova
• For changes in Firefox to WebExtensions: Jesper Kristensen, Deepjyoti Mondal, Giorgio Maone, Rob Wu. And finally a special shout out to Tomislav who fixed a total of 12 bugs in Firefox this release!

For a full list of the changes to Firefox over this period please check out this Bugzilla query.

https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2016/11/18/webextensions-in-firefox-52/

There is a lot of activity in the neural network hardware space. Intel just bought Nervana for $400m and Movidius for an undisclosed amount. Both make dedicated silicon to run and train neural networks. Most other chipset vendors I have talked to are similarly interested in adding direct support for neural networks to future chips. I think there is some risk in this approach. Here is why.

Most of the time executing a neural network is spent in massive matrix operations such as convolution and matrix multiplication. The state of the art is to use GPUs to do these operations because GPUs have a lot of ALUs and are well optimized for massively data parallel tasks. If you spent time optimizing neural networks for GPUs (we do!), you probably know that a well optimized engine achieves about 40-90% efficiency (ALU utilization). Dedicated neural network silicon aims to raise that to 100%, which is great, but in the end a 2x speedup only.

The problematic part is that chipset changes have a long lead time (2-3 years), and you have to commit today to the architectures of tomorrow. And thats where things get tricky. A paper published earlier this year showed that neural networks can be binarized, which reduces the precision of weights to 1 bit (-1, 1). Slow and energy inefficient floating point math turns into very efficient binary math (XNOR), which speeds up the network on existing commodity silicon by 400% with a very small loss in precision. Commodity GPUs support this because they are relatively general purpose computers. Dedicated neural network silicon is much more likely designed for a specific compute mode.

In the last 12 months or so alone we have seen dramatic advances in our understanding how to train and evaluate neural networks. Binarization is just one of them, and its fair to expect that over the next 2-3 years similarly impactful advances will be published. Committing to hardware designs based on today’s understanding of neural networks is ill advised in my opinion. My recommendation to chipset vendors is to beef up their GPUs and DSPs, and support a wide range of fixed point and floating point resolutions in a fairly generic manner. Its more likely that that will cover what we’ll want from silicon over the next 2-3 years.

https://andreasgal.com/2016/11/18/ai-silicon-vs-ai-software/

Once a month web developers across the Mozilla community get together (in person and virtually) to share what cool stuff we've been working on in...

https://air.mozilla.org/webdev-beer-and-tell-november-2016/

We will have four groups of students from the University of Design in Schw"abisch Gm"und present their work on different Firefox projects this Friday! What...

https://air.mozilla.org/hfg-firefox-design-workshop-ws2016-11-18/

Rust meetup for November 2016

https://air.mozilla.org/rust-meetup-november-2016-11-17/

Today we launched Firefox Focus, a brand new iOS browser that puts user privacy first. More than ever before, we believe that everyone on the Internet has a right to protect their privacy. By launching Firefox Focus, we are putting that belief into practice in a big way.

How big? If you download Firefox Focus and start to browse, you will notice a prominent “Erase” button in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. If you tap that button, the Firefox Focus app erases all browsing information including cookies, website history or passwords. Of course, you can erase this on any other browser but we are making it simple here – just one tap away.

Out of sight too often means out of mind. Burying the tools to clear browsing history and data behind clicks or taps means that fewer people will do it. By putting the “Erase” button front and center, we offer users a simple path to healthy online behaviors — protecting their online freedom and taking greater control of their personal data. To further enhance user privacy, Firefox Focus also by default blocks advertising, social and analytics tracking. So, on Firefox Focus, “private” browsing is actually automatic, and erasing your history is incredibly simple.

Of course, we know that for many Web activities people like the functionality that cookies or tracking data provides. Subscribers to the New York Times probably dislike typing a password every time they want to read articles on the site. Most people prefer that their browser autocompletes their commonly used URLs.

That said, sometimes people don’t want to be tracked. We use the internet to research personal topics about our health – cancer or Alzheimer’s, for example. We use the Web to make purchases that are legal but can be sensitive — “hotel reservations in Cancun” or ”engagement rings”. We browse controversial topics that we may not want anyone else to know we are reading about.

This accessibility of information is one of the most powerful aspects of the Web. It is all the more powerful when anonymity is protected.

We at Mozilla believe that protecting one’s privacy should be as simple as a single tap. Firefox Focus is an experiment to see what happens when we make this radically simple. As part of our mission to maintain the health of the Internet, we will continue to try out new ways to promote user privacy. We hope you download Firefox Focus, hit that “Erase” button and see how it works for you.

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2016/11/17/privacy-made-simple-with-firefox-focus/

Greetings, SUMO Nation!

How have you been? Many changes around and we haven’t been slacking either – we are getting closer to the soft launch of the new community platform (happening next week), so be there when it happens :-) More details below…

Welcome, new contributors!

• DanielNL
• … autumn is getting to you all, hm? There is probably more of you, but you haven’t made yourselves known, so all the spotlights are on Daniel this week ;-)

If you just joined us, don’t hesitate – come over and say “hi” in the forums!

SUMO Community meetings

• LATEST ONE: 16th of November – you can read the notes here and see the video at AirMozilla.
  
• NEXT ONE: happening on the 23rd of November!
• If you want to add a discussion topic to the upcoming meeting agenda:
  • Start a thread in the Community Forums, so that everyone in the community can see what will be discussed and voice their opinion here before Wednesday (this will make it easier to have an efficient meeting).
  • Please do so as soon as you can before the meeting, so that people have time to read, think, and reply (and also add it to the agenda).
  • If you can, please attend the meeting in person (or via IRC), so we can follow up on your discussion topic during the meeting with your feedback.

Community

• If you want to help us brainstorm how to promote “Internet Awareness” among our visitors, please join us here.
• A guest blog post from a member of the SUMO Nation is coming your way… Patience, my friends!
• By the way… Do you know Rust?
• Reminder: We are going to retire the main SUMO mailing list, since it has been not used extensively for quite a while. So, you should remove sumo(AT)lists.mozilla.org from your contact lists.

Platform

• Check the notes from the last meeting in this document. (and don’t forget about our meeting recordings).
• The main point of today’s meeting was checking in and going through the list of outstanding issues. Please check the document linked above to make sure you’re up to date with the latest events.
• We are still aiming for a migration next week!
• You can preview the current migration test site here.
  • All your staging login data should work, but if you can’t access the site, contact Madalina. Take a good look at the new (refreshed) home page and anything else that looks new to you.
  • Drop your feedback into the same feedback document as usual.
• Reminder: The post-migration feature list can be found here (courtesy of Roland – ta!)
  • We are still looking for user stories to focus on immediately after the migration (also known as “Phase 1”)

Social

Support Forum

Knowledge Base & L10n

• Over 360 revisions have been submitted over the last 7 days – thank you, editors of SUMO!
• If you’re curious about the upcoming KB & l10n process changes for the new platform, you have a taste of it here.
• Thank you for making the version 50 articles “speak your language” :-) Users all around the world appreciate your efforts!

Firefox (release week for 50.0!)

• for Android
  
  • The forum thread for version 50 is here!

• for Desktop
  • The forum thread for version 50 is here (thanks to Philipp).

• for iOS
  • Firefox Focus is lauching today, so if you’ve got questions, check the FAQ doc about that. You can also read more about it on the other blog ;-)
    

Finally, something for your long autumn evenings… The playlist of (almost all) your great recommendations from the music sharing thread! Enjoy and keep rocking the helpful web!

https://blog.mozilla.org/sumo/2016/11/17/whats-up-with-sumo-17th-november/

Weekly project updates from the Mozilla Connected Devices team.

https://air.mozilla.org/connected-devices-weekly-program-update-20161117/

A few weeks after I pestered Ada Rose Edwards to write her first Smashing Magazine article on Progressive Web Apps I did a Skype call with her to talk about the same topic.

You can see the video and get the audio recording of our chat over at the Decoded blog:

Ada is a great talent in our market and I am looking forward to pestering her to do more of these good things.

Here are the questions we covered:

1. Ada, you just wrote on Smashing Magazine about “The building blocks of progressive web apps”. Can you give a quick repeat on what they are?
2. We’ve had a few attempts at using web technology to build app like experiences. A lot of them left end users disappointed. What do you think were the main mistakes developers did?
3. Is the “app shell” model a viable one or is this against the idea of “content first” web sites turning into apps?
4. You worked on one of the poster-child web-technology based apps in the past – the Financial Times app. What were the main challenges you faced there?
5. It seems that in the mobile space it is OK to abandon platforms that arent’ used much any longer, should that be something to consider for the web and browsers, too?
6. Progressive Web apps do away with the concept of a need of an app store. This is more convenient, but it also poses a UX challenge. Users aren’t expecting a web site to work offline. What can we do to break that assumption?
7. The wonderful thing about PWAs is that they are progressive, which means that platforms that don’t support ServiceWorkers should still have a good experience and fall back to a classic “add to homescreen” scenario. What can we do to avoid people forgetting about this and build “this app needs Chrome on latest Android” apps instead?
8. Are responsive interfaces a unique skill of web developers? Is it something we learned simply because of the nature of the platform?
9. The distribution model of PWAs is the hyperlink. You pointed out rightfully in your article that there needs to be a way to share this link and send it to others. Hardliners of the web also argue that a URL should be visible and “hackable”. Do you think this is a valid need?
10. What about Instant Apps on Android? Aren’t they a threat to Progressive Web Apps?
11. What can we do to avoid PWAs becoming the new “m.example.com”? The average web site it too big and slow to become and app. How high are your hopes that this new approach could help the web as a whole become slimmer?

https://www.christianheilmann.com/2016/11/17/decoded-chats-the-fifth-ada-rose-edwards-on-progressive-web-apps/

Hello Mozillians,

We are happy to announce that next Friday, November 25th, we are organizing Firefox 51 Beta 3 Testday. We’ll be focusing our testing on the WebGL2, FLAC support, Indicator for device permissions and Zoom Indicator features, bug verifications and bug triage. Check out the detailed instructions via this etherpad.

No previous testing experience is required, so feel free to join us on #qa IRC channel where our moderators will offer you guidance and answer your questions.

Join us and help us make Firefox better! See you on Friday!

https://quality.mozilla.org/2016/11/firefox-51-beta-3-testday/

the following changes have been pushed to bugzilla.mozilla.org:

• [1315326] Add dependencies for Amazon S3 storage to Makefile.PL and META.*
• [1317519] Triage owners page doesn’t properly creates links to bug lists
• [1317965] Flag permission checks broken by bug 1257662 allowing unauthorized flag modification

discuss these changes on mozilla.tools.bmo.

https://dlawrence.wordpress.com/2016/11/17/happy-bmo-push-day-29/

Today, we’re pleased to announce the launch of Firefox Focus – a free, fast and easy to use private browser for iOS.

Firefox Focus

We live in an age where too many users have lost trust and lack meaningful controls over their digital lives. For some users, it seems as though your web activities can follow you everywhere – across devices, across accounts. To make matters worse, the web can often feel cluttered. That’s why we are introducing Firefox Focus.

For the times when you don’t want to leave a record on your phone. You may be looking for information that in certain situations is sensitive – searches for engagement rings, flights to Las Vegas or expensive cigars, for example. And sometimes you just want a super simple, super fast Web experience – no tabs, no menus, no pop-ups.

Firefox Focus gives you just that.

Firefox Focus is set by default to block many of the trackers that follow you around the Web. You don’t need to change privacy or cookie settings.  You can browse with peace of mind, feeling confident in the knowledge that you can instantly erase your sessions with a single tap – no menus needed.

Firefox Focus Erase Button

Much of what makes mobile web pages slow is the technology used to track users on the web. Because Firefox Focus blocks these trackers, it is likely you’ll notice a performance boost on the many sites that track your behavior. When you occasionally see a site that doesn’t work because it is dependent on tracking, and if you don’t mind that kind of tracking, Firefox Focus makes it easy to open your current site in either Firefox or Safari.

We look forward to your feedback on Firefox Focus.

You can download Firefox Focus from the App Store.

Firefox Focus continues to operate as a Safari content blocker on iOS, and users will be able to take advantage of Tracking Protection on both Safari and Firefox Focus.

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2016/11/17/introducing-firefox-focus-a-free-fast-and-easy-to-use-private-browser-for-ios/

A couple of weeks ago, I decided I needed a steel 15cm ruler. This sort of ruler doesn’t have a margin at one end, and so is good for measuring distances away from walls and other obstructions. I found one on Amazon for 88p including delivery and, thinking that was excellent value, clicked “Buy now with 1-Click” and thought no more of it.

Today, after a slightly longer delay than I expected, it arrived. From Shenzhen.

I knew container transport by sea is cheap, but I am amazed that 88p can cover the cost of the ruler, the postage in China, the air freight, a payment to the delivery firm in the UK, and some profit. And, notwithstanding my copy of “Poorly Made in China” which arrived the same day and which I have not yet read, the quality seems fine…

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HackingForChrist/~3/SuOuZqNnNZo/

Ever wanted to print a booklet in software which doesn’t directly support it? You can fake it by printing the pages in exactly the right order, but it’s a pain to work out by hand.

I found a JS booklet page order calculator on Github, enhanced it to support duplex printers, cleaned it up, and it’s now on my website.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HackingForChrist/~3/sqCcYFQL7Ho/

https://medium.com/@mmayo/i-believe-the-idea-is-that-people-can-learn-rust-d5416c1d2083?source=rss-5c6a321cb3bd------2

En el d'ia de ayer Mozilla lanz'o una nueva versi'on de nuestro navegador favorito. Aunque esta no presenta tantas novedades, s'i incluye varios detalles que es v'alido presentarles.

Mozilla cada vez m'as sigue apostando por llevar Firefox a todo el mundo y ha incluido diversos idiomas para hacer de su navegador uno de los softwares m'as localizados en la actualidad. En esta oportunidad se incluy'o el Guaran'i, una lengua ind'igena sudamericana y con ella suman 91 las versiones disponibles desde el sitio oficial de la fundaci'on.

Los usuarios podr'an reproducir videos sin la necesidad de tener el plugin WebM EME Support for Widevine en Windows y Mac.

La b'usqueda de palabras en una p'agina (Ctrl + F) ha sido mejorado y ahora resalta los resultados de una forma m'as agradable a la vista. Tambi'en se ha incluido la opci'on de hacer coincidir lo buscado en toda la palabra.

El rendimiento del Add-on SDK ha sido perfeccionado al ser mejorado el m'odulo loader, esto beneficiar'a en gran medida a las extensiones que lo usan y representa un aumento en la velocidad de inicio de Firefox.

Tambi'en se ha incluido el soporte nativo para Emoji en sistemas operativos que no soportan este tipo de fuentes (Linux y Windows 8 o superiores).

Los atajos del teclado han sido actualizados para nuestra comodidad:

• Con Ctrl + Tab podr'as cambiar entre pesta~nas f'acilmente.
• Ctrl+Alt+R activa el Modo Lectura (comando+alt+r en Mac)

Por otra parte, la seguridad ha sido reforzada mediante la correcci'on de varios problemas y la protecci'on de las descargas para un gran n'umero de archivos ejecutables en Windows, Mac y Linux.

Para Android

• Los paneles Historial y Pesta~nas recientes han sido combinados para simplificar la interfaz.
• Se a~nadi'o el soporte a los videos HSL (HTTP Live Streaming).

Para desarrolladores

Pueden visitar este art'iculo publicado en nuestra 'area de Desarrollo.

Si prefieres ver la lista completa de novedades, puedes llegarte hasta las notas de lanzamiento (en ingl'es).

Puedes obtener esta versi'on desde nuestra zona de Descargas en espa~nol e ingl'es para Android, Linux, Mac y Windows. Si te ha gustado, por favor comparte con tus amigos esta noticia en las redes sociales. No dudes en dejarnos un comentario.

https://firefoxmania.uci.cu/firefox-ahora-habla-guarani-e-incorpora-detalles-interesantes/

Join Mozilla Learning, Hive Chicago, Hive New York, and other special guests to discuss youth leadership and how we can empower youth to get involved...

https://air.mozilla.org/mozilla-learning-community-call-youth-leadership-2016-11-16/

Remember the curl meeting we’re hosting in spring 2017 in Germany?

The registration is now open!

Please skip over there and sign-up if you want and plan to attend this unique event of its kind.

There will be an attendance fee, which is not yet determined but it will not be very steep.

Check out meeting details and do join the curl-meet mailing list!

https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/11/16/registration-is-open-for-curlup/

As humans conditioned to win and succeed since birth, navigating how to “fail well" is hardly intuitive. What constitutes a "good failure"? And at what...

https://air.mozilla.org/failure-the-hard-part-about-innovation-2016-11-16/

mconley livehacks on real Firefox bugs while thinking aloud.

https://air.mozilla.org/the-joy-of-coding-episode-80/