What Topics do Firefox and Chrome Contributors Discuss?

1. What Topics do Firefox and
Chrome Contributors Discuss?
Mario Luca Bernardi, Carmine Sementa
Quirino Zagarese, Damiano Distante
Massimiliano Di Penta
dipenta@unisannio.it

2. Context
 Nowadays Web browsers are among
the most widely used applications
Firefox and Chrome the 2nd and 3rd
top popular browsers
 They evolve to fix bugs, introduce new
features, cope with market and the
evolution of the Web
 (part of) their evolution tracked by Bug
Tracking Systems

3. What we do
 Goal: analyze the topics discussed in issue
reports over time
 Context:
 88,538 Firefox issues (2005-2010)
 49,986 Chrome issue reports (2008-2010)
 Research Questions:
 RQ1: topics discussed over time
 RQ2: overlap between Firefox and Chrome
topics
 RQ3: overlap in the same time frame

4. Analysis process
 Term extraction and indexing
 Extraction of text from HTML pages
 Stop words removal, stemming, tf indexing
 Topic mining
 Group bugs into semester periods
 Topic identification using
Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA)
 Issue classification into topics
 Topic co-evolution analysis
 Topics to which most issues pertain
 (Jaccard) overlap between popular topics
discussed for the two browsers

5. Most popular topics: Firefox
2005 S1 width; px; border; height; align Layouting/
2005 S2 width; background; px; height; border formatting
issues
2006 S1 px; width; border; cell; posit
2006 S2 enabl; disabl; usr; warn; gmake Low-level
2007 S1 home; match; bin; zbyszek; crt and building
issues
2007 S2 ctype; lc; match; moz; nsiframe
2008 S1 leak; zoom; extension; addon; total Layouting/
2008 S2 width; px; background; border; size formatting
issues
2009 S1 ircategoryopt; home; warn; unexpected; tinderbox
2009 S2 elem; width; height; px; tag
2010 S1 slave; reftest; unexpected; mochitest; pass

6. Most popular topics: Chrome
2008 S2 slave; messageloop; offici; signatur; pump Low-level /
2009 S1 pump; messagepumpwin; wchar; dispatch; ntdll performance
2009 S2 player; quicktim; mb; ram; ghz; hostnam Multimedia /
2010 S1 info; player; quicktim; mb; signatur performance

7. Overlapping topics

8. Overlapping (same period)
Period Overlapping topic
2008 S2 movi; youtub; stop; video; player; game; plai; flash; sound
2008 S2 left; width; height; border; px
2008 S2 cpu; task; usag; slow; hang
2008 S2 hit; shift; tag; keyboard; focu
2008 S2 usernam; account; login; email; authent
2009 S1 youtub; video; player; plai; flash
2009 S1 width; background; bottom; size; posit
2009 S2 left; mous; bottom; posit; screen
2010 S1 left; width; resiz; bottom; height; size; border; posit; px
2010 S1 restart; visit; login; comput; websit; hang

9. Conclusions
 Discussion about:
 Firefox: quite heterogeneous
 Chrome: mainly related to performance
and multimedia
 Non negligible overlap
 Related to generic topics
– e.g., page layouting
 Related to multimedia in recent periods

10. Thank you!
Questions?

11. Overlapping topics
Firefox Chrome Common terms in the topics
2008 S2 2008 S2 movi; youtub; stop; video; player; game; plai; flash; sound
2009 S1 2008 S2 youtub; stop; video; player; watch; game; plai; flash; sound
2010 S1 2010 S1 left; width; resiz; bottom; height; size; border; posit; px
2005 S2 2008 S2 movi; stop; video; shockwav; player; game; plai; flash
2006 S1 2009 S2 mous; resiz; ctrl; size; posit; screen; keyboard; focu
2006 S2 2009 S1 width; resiz; background; bottom; size; visibl; posit; scrollbar
2007 S2 2008 S2 youtub; movi; video; player; watch; plai; sound; flash
2007 S2 2010 S1 width; resiz; bottom; height; border; size; posit; px
2007 S2 2010 S1 mous; hit; ctrl; reload; shift; activ; focu; keyboard
2008 S1 2010 S1 width; resiz; bottom; height; size; border; posit; px
2009 S1 2010 S1 youtub; stop; video; player; watch; plai; ogg; sound
2009 S1 2010 S1 width; left; bottom; height; size; border; posit; px
2010 S1 2008 S2 left; width; resiz; bottom; height; border; px; pixel