<div dir="ltr"><div>Via <a href="https://dolske.wordpress.com/2017/06/08/photon-engineering-newsletter-5/">https://dolske.wordpress.com/2017/06/08/photon-engineering-newsletter-5/</a></div><div><br></div><div><p>Time for a solid update <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVzu1_12FUc">#5</a>!
So far the Photon project appears to be well on track — our work is
scoped to what we think is achievable for Firefox 57, and we’re
generally fixing bugs at a good rate.</p>
<h2>Search Box?</h2>
<p>If you’ve been paying attention to any of the Photon mockups and
design specs floating around, you may have noticed the conspicuous
absence of the search box in the toolbar (i.e. there’s just a location
field and buttons). What’s up with that?</p>
<p><img class="gmail-alignnone gmail-size-full gmail-wp-image-1949" src="https://dolske.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/win10mock.png?w=474" alt="win10mock"></p>
<p>For some time now, we’ve been working on improving searching directly
from the location field. You can already search from there by simply
entering your search term, see search suggestions as you type, and click
the icons of other search engines to do a one-off search with them
instead of your default. [The one-off search feature has been in Nightly
for a while, and will start shipping in Firefox 55.] The location bar
now can do everything the search box can, and more. So at this point the
search box is a vestigial leftover from how browsers worked 10+ years
ago, and we’d like to remove it to reclaim precious UI space. Today, no
other major browser ships with both a location field and search box.</p>
<p>That said, we’re being careful about understanding the impact of
removing the search box, since it’s been such a long-standing feature.
We’re currently running a series of user studies to make sure we
understand how users search, and that the unified search/location bar
meets their needs. And since Mozilla works closely with our search
engine partners, we also want to make sure any changes to how users
search is not a surprise.</p>
<p>Finally, I should note that this is about removing the search box as
the default for _new_ Firefox users. Photon won’t be removing the search
box entirely, you’ll still be able to add it back through Customize
Mode if you so desire. (Please put down your pitchforks and torches.
Thank you.) We’re still discussing what to do for existing users…
There’s a trade-off between proving a fresh, clean, and modern
experience as part of the upgrade to Photon (especially for users who
haven’t been using the search box), and removing a UI element that some
people have come to expect and use.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Recent Changes</h2>
<div>Menus/structure:</div>
<div>
<ul><li>Hamburger panel is now feature complete!
<ul><li>An <a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1368734">exit/quit</a> menu item was added (except on macOS, as the native menubar handles this).</li><li>A restyled <a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1354105">zoom control</a> was added.</li><li>One small feature-not-yet-complete: the library subview is reusing
the same content as the library panel, and so won’t be complete until
the library panel itself is complete.</li><li>A number of smaller bugs and regressions fixed.</li></ul>
</li><li>Initial version of the new <a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1354155">Library panel</a> has landed
<ul><li>It still needs a lot of work, items are missing, and the styling
isn’t done. Landing this early allows us to unblock work in other areas
of Photon (notably animations) that need to interact with this button.</li><li>We haven’t placed it into the toolbar by default yet. Until we do
so, if you want to play with it you’ll need to manually add it from
Customization mode.</li></ul>
</li><li>We’re getting ready to enable the Photon structure pref by default
on Nightly, and are just fixing the last tests so that everything is
green on our CI infrastructure. Soon!</li></ul>
<p> </p>
</div>
<div>Animation:</div>
<div>
<ul><li><a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1364221">Landed a patch</a>
that allows us to move more of our animations to the compositor and off
of the main thread. Previously, this optimization was only allowed when
the item’s width was narrower than the window, now it’s based on
available area. (Our animations are using very wide sprite sheet
“filmstrips” which required this — more about this in a future update).</li><li>Work continues on animations for downloads toolbar button,
stop/reload button, and page loading indicator. The first two have gone
up for review, and unfortunately we found some issues with the plan for
the downloads button which requires further work.</li></ul>
</div>
<div>Preferences:</div>
<div>
<ul><li>Finalized <a href="https://mozilla.invisionapp.com/share/P4ACQT1E3#/screens/217167547">spec</a> for the preferences reorg version 2. The team will now begin implementation of the changes.</li><li>The team is working on improving search highlighting in
about:preferences to include sub-dialogs and fixing some
highlight/tooltip glitches.</li><li><a href="https://mozilla.invisionapp.com/share/ZDAGPK3AF#/screens/218928256">The spec for Search behavior</a> is also being finalized.</li></ul>
</div>
<div>Visual redesign:</div>
<div>
<ul><li>One of the most obvious changes this week was the <a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1355764">removal of the window drag space</a>
above the tabs. The tabs are now flush with the top of the window. To
allow for dragging the window, we’ve increased the space to the left of
the first tab.</li><li>Fixed some bugs with the appearance of the <a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1362408">back button</a>, <a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1367565">permission icons</a>, and <a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1368818">bookmark items</a>.</li></ul>
</div>
<div>Onboarding:</div>
<div>
<ul><li>Enabled the basic onboarding overlay on <a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1357005">about:newtab</a> and <a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1369296">about:home</a>. Now you can see a little fox icon on the top-left corner on about:newtab and about:home on Nightly! (<a href="https://mozilla.invisionapp.com/share/4MBDUMS5W#/screens/228511972_Overview">Here’s the full spec</a> for what will eventually be implemented. We’re working on getting the first version ready for Firefox 56.)</li><li>Finished <a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1361286">creating the message architecture</a> so that the Auto-migration code can talk with Activity Stream</li></ul>
</div>
<div>Performance:</div>
<div>
<ul><li>Even more tests for sync reflows, covering <a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1369491">the Photon menu and its subview transitions</a>.</li><li>We now have <a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1358798">a test checking which JS components and modules are loaded</a> at which phase of startup, and started <a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1369467">taking things off app-startup</a>.
These tests help ensure we don’t accidentally regress improvements to
Firefox startup… We’ve already made some fixes where code that was
supposed to load lazily was being loaded during startup, and these tests
will catch that.</li></ul>
<p> </p>
<p>That’s all for this week!</p>
</div><div><br></div><div>Justin<br></div></div><br></div>