Archive for November, 2009

Jetpack, AMO, WebGL, surveys, Design Challenges, and more…

In this issue…

Jetpack 50-line code challenge
The Mozilla Labs team, along with the release of Jetpack 0.6, has announced a new Jetpack contest. The contest runs until Dec 13, and the challenge is to create the “most awesome Jetpack” that uses less than 50 lines of code. Prizes include a brand new netbook (ASUS Eee PC 1000HE) and a big package of Mozilla swag. For more details, check out the original contest announcement.

Launching the Jetpack gallery
Mozilla Labs recently launched the Jetpack Gallery, a “community for developers and add-on users: Users get innovative add-ons that add functionality to Firefox, while developers receive valuable feedback and visibility in the Jetpack community.” You can browse Jetpacks by tag, author, and popularity, as well as vote on and review the ones you try. See the Mozilla Labs blog post for more information.

Jetpack contest winner
“We are happy to announce that we have a winner for the Jetpack 0.5 contest. Given the fantastic group of entrants, with Jetpacks that did everything from Twitter to a one-click text translator, it was hard to pick a winner. Alexander Meltsev of Moscow created a prototype for allowing Jetpacks to process large amounts of data on your computer’s graphical co-processor. Alex’s work is both creative and unusual. It digs deep into what a potential future use of Jetpack can be — allowing for high-performance computing that is accessible to casual developers.” Read more at the contest blog post.

AMO welcomes self-hosted add-ons
The AMO team recently launched a pilot program to allow self-hosted add-ons to be listed on AMO alongside thousands of Mozilla-hosted add-ons. “One of the staples of the Mozilla add-ons platform is the choice developers have to host and distribute their add-ons on any website they’d like, not just addons.mozilla.org. Yet, as the largest gallery of add-ons, Mozilla Add-ons is where users come to search for and discover new add-ons, which leaves add-ons hosted on a personal or business website out of sight and usually out of mind.” Self-hosted add-ons won’t have all the same AMO site features as Mozilla-hosted add-ons, but they will appear in search and browse listings, collections, and can be reviewed and rated.

New AMO Contributions options
The Mozilla Add-ons website has allowed add-on developers to request voluntary contributions from their users as part of a pilot project that has been running over the past few months. The team has added some new options to that project which they hope will make a difference in the way users make contributions. “Pledge drives” allow add-on developers to do focused, short-term drives to raise funds through their add-ons, and “Subscriptions” allow users to provide a regular monthly contribution to an add-on developer for 12 months. Contributions are a simple and effective way to support your favourite add-on developers and help them continue their work — visit the AMO website and consider making a contribution today.

Download source tracking on AMO
With the recent AMO update, the team made a tiny change to every add-on download button on the website that now allows them to see from what parts of the site add-ons are downloaded. “With the help of Daniel Einspanjer on our metrics team, we’re now able to analyze whether an add-on download came from an AMO search results page, the add-on’s display page, the Firefox Add-ons Manager, or one of around 12 predefined sources we are tracking.” Add-on developers can also see this data for their add-on as part of the Statistics Dashboard. “Our source tracking system also allows developers to add their own tracking codes for external links to their add-on. By simply adding a src parameter to any add-on’s URL or download URL, that source will start being tracked and appear in the Statistics Dashboard.”

WebGL updates + Planet WebGL
Mark Steele has posted a short update on WebGL-related goings on. Included is a link to a fully-playable WebGL game demo that works in Minefield (Cube Defense), and links to a couple of libraries that simplify writing applications that use WebGL. “Since there isn’t any real documentation on WebGL so far, getting even this far takes some digging and patience. Giles Thomas created a blog about WebGL with very detailed lessons based on the NeHe OpenGL lessons.” Additionally, a planet site for WebGL has been set up to aggregate blog posts from people posting about WebGL — they’re looking for more people to include, so if you write about WebGL, contact Chris Blizzard to be added.

University design challenge mockups
Pascal Finette has posted an update about the Fall ‘09 Mozilla Labs Design Challenge. “We challenged students from universities around the world to develop concepts and solutions to the question: Browsing History – how can we make sense of this rich source of data and how do we best present this data to the user? Students from four schools took the challenge and worked intensively on their ideas — some in the form of a Design Jam next to their normal course work, others as part of their university assignments.” All the design concepts have been submitted, and you can review them via the Labs website.

User feedback after Firefox install
Mozilla’s Metrics team has been working in integrating user outreach into the mozilla.com website. Most recently, they posted about comments left by users during their visit to the Firefox “First Run” page, which brand new users hit after downloading and installing Firefox for the first time. “About 1,200 people left feedback over the past month. Overall, the feedback looks really amazing. For such a high percentage of people to go out of their way to say something positive is incredible. On the downside, there were two issues identified by users that we weren’t previously aware of. Thanks to this insight, we’ve been able to prioritize a fix, and we’re hoping to ship it in the next release of Firefox!”

Web developer survey
A few weeks ago the Mozilla Evangelism and Marketing teams announced the beginnings of the new Mozilla Developer Network (MDN). If you’re a Web developer, they need your help in understanding who you are, what you’re interested in, and what resources would be most valuable for you on MDN. To do this, they have created a short survey for which they’re hoping to get a total of 5000 responses. Take the survey today!

Planet Mozilla survey
Planet Mozilla is a central and vital resource for the Mozilla Community, and the team is looking for ways to improve it. They’re seeking your input on what you think Planet should be for, how well it’s fulfilling that purpose, and how it could be improved or augmented to better serve our community.

If you use Planet Mozilla at all, please take a few minutes of your time to answer three short questions about it. The team is hoping to get as much feedback as possible, so you can also leave other comments and insights about Planet or other Planet-related things on the original blog post. Respond to the Planet Mozilla survey at SurveyMonkey.

Upcoming events
The Mozilla community is organizing an increasing number of events and meetups all the time, and we include a list of these here every week. If you have events you would like listed, send them along to: about-mozilla*at*mozilla.com.

* Nov 20 – Online – Testday: Firefox 3.6
* Dec 4 – Online – Testday: Weave

Developer calendar
For an up-to-date list of the coming week’s Mozilla project meetings and events, please see the Mozilla Community Calendar wiki page. Notes from previous meetings are linked to through the Calendar as well.

About about:mozilla
about:mozilla is by, for and about the Mozilla community, focusing on major news items related to all aspects of the Mozilla Project. The newsletter is written by Deb Richardson and is published every Tuesday morning. If you have any news or announcements you would like to have included in our next issue, please send them to: about-mozilla[at]mozilla.com.

If you would like to get this newsletter by email, just head on over to the about:mozilla newsletter subscription form. Fresh news, every Tuesday, right to your inbox.

about:mozilla

17 Nov 2009 deb comments off

Five years of Firefox, 25% market share, and more…

In this issue…

Celebrating five years of Firefox

Five years ago yesterday, Mozilla launched Firefox 1.0 with the belief that, as the most significant social and technological development of our time, the Internet is a public resource that must remain open and accessible to all. Since then, Firefox has gained over 330 million users worldwide; almost a quarter of Internet users in the world. We’ve come so far in the past five years, and we’re incredibly excited about the next five. For a more comprehensive look at where we’ve been and where we’re headed, check out the post on hacks.mozilla.org. Mitchell Baker has also posted about this event.

This is not a simple one day celebration — Mozilla communities are hosting parties all over the globe in a special campaign called “Light the World with Firefox” — shining the Firefox logo from Tokyo to Rome, from Paris to San Francisco, and more. For full details on the parties in your area or to check out other ways to join in the celebration, head over to the Firefox Five Years website.

How to light the world with Firefox

Mary Colvig has written a great post in which she gives more information and inspiration for the Light the World with Firefox event, launched as a way for people around the globe to help Mozilla celebrate Firefox’s fifth birthday. Head over to Mary’s blog to get ideas for mobile, mash-ups, shadow play, stencils, and more.

Firefox hits 25% market share

Ken Kovash, head of Mozilla’s number-crunching metrics team, writes, “At the very same moment in time that Firefox celebrates its 5th birthday, Firefox has also surpassed 25% worldwide market share for the very first time. This news comes from Net Applications’ report for the week of November 1st.” Further details, including “before” and “after” pie charts, are available on Ken’s blog.

Web developer survey!

Two weeks ago the Mozilla Evangelism and Marketing teams announced the beginnings of the new Mozilla Developer Network (MDN). If you’re a Web developer, they need your help in understanding who you are, what you’re interested in, and what resources would be most valuable for you on MDN. To do this, they have created a short survey for which they’re hoping to get a total of 5000 responses. With 3600 responses so far, the teams have posted an initial set of results at the Mozilla Hacks weblog. Take the survey today!

Jetpack for Learning design challenge

The Mozilla Labs and Mozilla Foundation teams have joined together to host the Jetpack for Learning design challenge, which is already underway. “We invite you to help turn the open Web into a rich learning environment and explore new possibilities for using Firefox add-ons to support learning online. We’re looking for designers, educators and software developers who want to turn their innovative ideas into working prototypes. Participants creating the best prototypes will be invited to the Jetpack for Learning Design Camp and the SXSW Interactive conference in March 2010.” There’s still time to make submissions (deadline is Nov 27th), and all students and educators are encouraged to participate. “The Mozilla project is a great place to be a student, and this is just one more reason why.”

Firefox Goes Mobile challenge winner

The results from the Mozilla Creative Collective’s “Firefox Goes Mobile” design challenge are in, and we’re pleased to announce that the winner is “Pocketfox”, by Yaroslaff Chekunov. As the official emblem of the upcoming mobile version of Firefox, we’ll be using this image as an avatar on social networking sites, on mozilla.com, on t-shirts and more. Yaroslaff, who is based in Krasnodar, Russia, cites as his design inspiration, “the Firefox itself, your approach to the web-site execution, and of course my wife who always brings up new ideas.” Be sure to check out his other Mozilla work as well as his general portfolio. For further details about the results, including the four runners-up, see Caitlin Looney’s blog post.

Important API changes

The Mozilla Hacks team has written a post outlining some important API changes of interest to Web developers. These include removing the media element “load” event, and changing our CSS gradient syntax. For details, you can read the original posts at Robert O’Callahan’s weblog: media element, CSS gradient.

Advancing Web Typography presentation

John Daggett writes, “Last week Jonathan Kew and I went down to attend and present at ATypl 2009, a typography conference that took place in Mexico City. There was an entire day of sessions on web fonts. Jonathan and I presented a session on ‘Advancing Web Typography’.” You can read more and download the presentation slides at John’s weblog.

Test Pilot 0.3 and a new study

The Mozilla Labs team has announced a new version of Test Pilot and a new upcoming study. “For this study, which will be launching at the beginning of December, we would like to explore what a browser does to facilitate using the Web through a year. We will periodically collect usage information about the browser for a week and run the same study again every 60 days. The main goal is to explore if the browser has been used differently over time, which may help us design a better product that works adaptively.” For more information about this release, see the original announcement post. You can download Test Pilot from addons.mozilla.org.

Accessibility features in Firefox 3.6

Marco Zehe has posted a fantastic round up of the accessibility features that will be in Firefox 3.6. These include: support for voice dictation software in Windows, Windows 7 task bar integration, more consistent focus handling, support for the IAccessibleTable2 interface, more consistent and maintainable naming rules, notifying screen readers when an object attribute’s value changes, and “tons of bug fixes”. For details on all of these and links to more information, see Marco’s weblog.

Firefox 3.5.5 update

As part of Mozilla’s ongoing stability and security update process, Firefox 3.5.5 is now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux as a free download from Firefox.com. We strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to this latest release. If you already have Firefox 3.5, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. This update can also be applied manually by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu. For a list of changes and more information, please see the Firefox 3.5.5 Release Notes.

Weave 0.8 released

Mike Connor, part of the Mozilla Labs Weave team, has announced the release of Weave 0.8. “We’ve been hard at work over the last month on the next milestone on our path to 1.0, and we’ve just released version 0.8. In this last pre-beta release we have made a number of changes based on feedback from users around tighter integration with Firefox and Fennec, and improvements to the incremental sync behaviour introduced in 0.7. For more details about Weave 0.8, please check out the details over at the Weave blog.”

Upcoming events

The Mozilla community is organizing an increasing number of events and meetups all the time, and we include a list of these here every week. If you have events you would like listed, send them along to: about-mozilla*at*mozilla.com.

* Nov 13 – Online – Testday: Fennec
* Nov 20 – Online – Testday: Firefox 3.6
* Dec 4 – Online – Testday: Weave

Developer calendar
For an up-to-date list of the coming week’s Mozilla project meetings and events, please see the Mozilla Community Calendar wiki page. Notes from previous meetings are linked to through the Calendar as well.

About about:mozilla
about:mozilla is by, for and about the Mozilla community, focusing on major news items related to all aspects of the Mozilla Project. The newsletter is written by Deb Richardson and is published every Tuesday morning. If you have any news or announcements you would like to have included in our next issue, please send them to: about-mozilla[at]mozilla.com.

If you would like to get this newsletter by email, just head on over to the about:mozilla newsletter subscription form. Fresh news, every Tuesday, right to your inbox.

about:mozilla

10 Nov 2009 deb comments off

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