[tor-reports] Pearl Crescent Report – November 2015

[Mark Smith]

Tor-related work completed by the Pearl Crescent team in November 2015
(Kathy Brade and Mark Smith):

* Tor Browser Updater:

We revamped the page that alpha users will see after an update:
   "Implement loading (only) local change notes after a
    Tor Browser update"
   https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/16940

We worked on removing extra updater-related certificate pinning:
   "adjust or remove updater cert pinning"
   https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/17442


* Tor Browser and Torbutton:

We helped with the 5.0.4 and 5.5a4 Tor Browser releases.

We reviewed and then revised a contributed patch for this long-standing 
(and somewhat tricky) issue:
   "Optimistic Data SOCKS variant (patch for #3875) leads to loop
    on HTTP requests if no SOCKS response yet"
   https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/9659

We developed a patch for this minor issue:
   "console.error on new Tor Browser window"
   https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/16863

And we reviewed several patches created by other developers, including 
for tickets #13819, 16990, 17108, 17369, 17446, and 17565.


* Tor Launcher:

Mozilla has announced that the WebExtensions API (a set of interfaces 
that is already supported by Google Chrome and Opera) will be the way to 
write Firefox add-ons in the future. Since Mozilla plans to extend the 
WebExtensions APIs to make it possible to port existing XUL/XPCOM 
extensions to the new world, we want to get our requirements noticed 
early. To that end, we did some research on what capabilities are 
missing that Tor Launcher will need.
   "Investigate new WebExtensions API requirements for our extensions"
   https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/17248

We improved the language prompt that is currently used in the hardened 
Tor Browser series by fixing this ticket:
   "language prompt should enumerate available langpacks"
   https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/17344


* Miscellaneous Activities:
    We participated in the weekly Tor Browser and app team meetings
    on IRC and in various design discussions on IRC and on the
    mailing lists.


* Planned for December:
   - Assist with the Tor Browser 5.0.x maintenance releases as needed.

   - Help finish Tor Browser 5.5, including the hardened package.

   - Work with UX researchers to ensure that their Tor Launcher
     research is productive (see the discussions on the new UX
     mailing list).

   - Related to the previous item, we plan to make some simple but
     valuable improvements to the Tor Launcher initial configuration
     wizard based on our own ideas as well as problems exposed by
     the recent usability tests that were done at Berkeley.

   - Take another look at the idea of having the browser updater
     verify updates by checking the Tor consensus. This is a
     work item we had scheduled for the 2nd half of 2015.
     See https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/14676

   - If time permits, scope out the work to make Tor Browser Unix
     Domain Socket aware.
     See https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/14270

   - Work on other Tor Browser, Tor Launcher, and Torbutton usability
     issues as time permits.

-- 
Mark Smith
Pearl Crescent
http://pearlcrescent.com/