On Friday 3 February Mozilla held a test day for Firefox 52 Beta 3. The new features under test were WebRTC components; DTMF and screen sharing. WebRTC is a collection of communication protocols and APIs that enable browsers to provide real time communication services such as desktop sharing, video calling, file sharing and more without the need for external plugins. In my own words I say that WebRTC bakes all the Skype features into the browser.
DTMF (Dual Tone Multi frequency), also known as Touch tone support will land in the release version of Firefox soon. There isn’t much use for DTMF in browser to browser communication but it is important for making calls to the traditional telephone network. Some companies use phone systems that require callers to send DTMF digits to indicate why they are calling and to send numbers such as extension numbers or pass codes or credit card numbers. DTMF support in the browser will make this possible.
We also tested Screen sharing and some improvements that were made to how drop down lists are displayed. Most of the testers on Windows did not experience problems with screen sharing but I think that support for it on Linux isn’t great yet. I could not reproduce some of the testcases so I filed the following bugs:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1336725
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1336723
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1336717
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1336721
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1336941
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1336933
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1336938
One of those has already been marked as invalid so I guess it doesn’t count anymore.
I enjoyed testing WebRTC so much that I am now watching the component in Bugzilla which means that whenever someone files a bug relating to WebRTC, I will get an email notification about it in my inbox.
If you’re interested in helping us make Firefox better but don’t know how to start, please get in touch with me, I will be more than happy to help you get started.