Test Pilot is launching three new experiments for Firefox
The Test Pilot team has been heads-down for months working on three new experiments for Firefox and you can get them all today!
Min Vid
Min Vid is an add-on that allows you to shrink a video into a small always-on-top frame in the corner of your browser. This lets you watch and interact with a video while browsing the web in other tabs. Opera and Safari are implementing similar features so this one might have some sticking power.
Thanks to Dave, Jen, and Jared for taking this from some prototype code to in front of Firefox users in six months.
Tracking Protection
Luke has been working hard on Tracking Protection - an experiment focused on collecting feedback from users about which sites break when Firefox blocks the trackers from loading. As we collect data from everyday users we can make decisions about how best to block what people don’t want and still show them what they do. Eventually this could lead to us protecting all Firefox users with Tracking Protection by default.
Page Shot
Page Shot is a snappy experiment that enables users to quickly take screenshots in their browser and share them on the internet. There are a few companies in this space already, but their products always felt too heavy to me, or they ignored privacy, or some simply didn’t even work (this was on Linux). Page Shot is light and quick and works great everywhere.
As a bonus, a feature I haven’t seen anywhere else, Page Shot also offers searching the text within the images themselves. So if you take a screenshot of a pizza recipe and later search for “mozzarella” it will find the recipe.
I was late to the Page Shot party and my involvement is just standing on the shoulders of giants at this point: by the time I was involved the final touches were already being put on. A big thanks to Ian and Donovan for bringing this project to life.
I called out the engineers who have been working to bring their creations to life, but of course there are so many teams who were critical to today’s launches. A big thank you to the people who have been working tirelessly and congratulations on launching your products! :)