The first time we heard about the Test Pilot program was in January 2009, but what began as a system to collect telemetry is now a space that offers all users small experiments they can try on their copies of Firefox and verify its functionality, while also helping to optimize the browser. Minimalist video players, tab containers, and screenshot tools are the order of the day, as long as you accept the occasional glitch.
Firefox comes with several problems, there's no point denying it. If we listen to users, both overall performance and memory consumption still leave much to be desired. All I have to do to check this is open the Task Manager and admire the 900 MB the browser claims with two tabs open and a single extension. Even though there are plenty of resources, it seems incredible that Firefox remains chained to those two stones. And on the other side we find several strategic errors when incorporating features. Its interface keeps changing. Firefox Hello blew up. Nobody wants Pocket. Sync should be an optional module, and there are certain things other browsers have already integrated successfully. Luckily, Mozilla picked up the gauntlet, and several of these aspects are being evaluated through the Firefox Test Pilot.
The total number of available experiments amounts to seven, but before you can activate them you must install the Test Pilot extension, which happens in the background. One of the most prominent experiments is Containers, which started its journey on the Nightly channel in mid-2016. In essence, Containers organizes our favorite sites into several categories, and they are also isolated from each other, a detail that enables opening more than one account in the same service (say, a work Twitter and a personal one). Another one worth mentioning is Pulse, a performance indicator that informs Mozilla how well certain sites work with Firefox. Finally, I want to mention the most popular Test Pilot experiment (553,000 users), called Page Shot. As its name suggests, Page Shot greatly simplifies taking screenshots on the browser.
There's no need to say it, all experiments should be considered a work in progress. Personally, I had several issues with Containers when assigning websites, and the Min Vid experiment, which opens YouTube videos in a small external player, never managed to play the content. Test Pilot requires patience, and when reporting bugs, you'll need a GitHub profile.
