My contribution to today’s Firefox release
29 October, 2013 § 6 Comments
I haven’t written up one of these blog posts in a while. The previous one was in August 2012 for Firefox 15. Coincidentally, that post mentioned a subtle change to the site identity area of the web browser.
In today’s release of Firefox, there is another subtle change to the site identity area of the browser. Pages that are a part of Firefox itself, whether it be the built-in home page (about:home), our troubleshooting page (about:support), or others now sport a special Firefox branding within the location bar. The goal of this branding is to increase awareness and trust with these pages.
Clicking on the Firefox name or the two-tone Firefox logo next to the name will show a popup notification that explains that this is a secure Firefox page.
These changes were previously announced when I introduced them to the Nightly channel of Firefox this past July.
JAWS 
I’ve noticed this icon today when opening the addon Quickfox Notes. What does this mean? I guess it’s not about encryption or SSL. Does this mean that this addon is secure, so not being malware? (I trust this addon to be clear.) I’m only afraid that this icon gives a false sense of security. If this would work for about: pages only, so for built in firefox pages, than it would tell something of value.
We need to do a better job at limiting which pages this gets applied to. You can follow along with that work in http://bugzil.la/935753. Thanks for reporting the issue!
And what about newtab page? (about:newtab) Shouldn’t it show this firefox identity also?
We treat about:newtab similar to about:blank, in that we want them to be considered “blank” pages and so they don’t have this identity exposed. Bug 935753 will tweak what pages get displayed as secure Firefox pages though. You may want to CC yourself to that bug.
Great change!
Thanks! It wasn’t much (most of my work during this time has been on Australis) but this will have extra benefits when Australis comes around since we won’t have the Firefox name visible on the browser’s window frame anymore.