[tor-reports] Pearl Crescent Report – March 2015

[Mark Smith]

Tor-related work that the Pearl Crescent team did in March
(Kathy Brade and Mark Smith):

* Firefox Updater for Tor Browser:

We made several small improvements to the updater and to the
Tor Browser build process:
   "Build MAR tools archive deterministically"
   https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/15023

   "Windows: disable "runas" code path in updater"
   https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/15201

   "Patch make_incremental_update.sh to only include forced updates if
    they differ"
   https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/15406


* Tor Browser and Torbutton:

We spent a little time testing the Tor Browser 4.0.5, 4.0.6, and 4.5a5 
candidate builds.

We helped with bug triage, code reviews, and worked on various fixes.

Tickets that we fixed:
   "Create preference to disable SVG"
    https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/12827

   "Create preference to disable MathML"
    https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/13548

   "Users that try to run from DMG files run into
       'Another copy of Firefox is running'"
    https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/14631

Interesting tickets for which we did code reviews:
   "Prompt if Tor Browser is Maximized"
    https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/7255

   "Tor Launcher/Torbutton should provide a "Security Slider"
    https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/9387

   "Better handle vertical displays"
    https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/13650

   "about:tor page has text alignment problems for RTL languages"
    https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/15085


* Tor Launcher:

We spent some time on bug triage and usability improvements.
Interesting tickets that we worked on:
   "Tor Launcher strips "bridge" from the middle of bridge lines"
    https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/13576

   "Improve error message "Connecting to a relay directory failed
        (no route to host)."
    https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/15006


* Miscellaneous Activities:
    We reviewed notes from the Winter Dev Meeting.

    We participated in the weekly Tor Browser dev meetings on IRC and
    in various design discussions on IRC and on the mailing lists.


* Planned for April 2015:
     - Do whatever we can to help the team ship Tor Browser 4.5.

     - Assist with porting Tor Browser patches to the Firefox ESR 38
       codebase.

     - Fix any updater issues that occur in the field, and continue
       to improve the updater user experience.

     - Make some progress on design and implementation for:
         "Implement update verification via Tor consensus in Tor Browser"
         https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/14676

     - Continue to look at Tor Browser, Tor Launcher, and Torbutton
       issues that were exposed during the UX Sprint.

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