In this issue…

Firefox 3.6 beta 1 available
Firefox 3.6 beta 1 was released last week. This beta is built on the Gecko 1.9.2 rendering engine and introduces several new features including built in Personas, automated plugin update notifications, full screen video, support for a new open font format, improved responsiveness and performance, and support for new CSS, DOM, and HTML5 technologies. Further information about this release is available at the Mozilla Developer Center and at the Mozilla Hacks weblog. You can download the beta through Mozilla.com.

Updating add-ons for Firefox 3.6
The AMO team has put together a quick five step program that developers can use to check compatibility with Firefox 3.6 and update their add-ons if necessary. “The add-on review queues are normally very busy during update times, so you should follow these guidelines to make sure your add-on stays up to date and doesn’t have to wait too long for review.” The team has also launched a new AMO forum if you have any questions or comments, and a new Compatibility Reporter tool is available to help developers know which add-ons work with Firefox 3.6.

Light the world with Firefox
“We’re coming up on a pretty incredible milestone,” writes Mary Colvig, “Five Years of Firefox on November 9, 2009! In order to celebrate we’re kicking off a special campaign called ‘Light the World with Firefox.’ We’re putting a call out for the most creative use of the Firefox logo and light.” To read more about participating in this world-wide event, see Mary’s blogpost over at the Mozilla Blog.

Jetpack Design Challenge
Mozilla Labs and the Mozilla Foundation, with support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, are sponsoring a Jetpack for Learning Design Challenge. “We are looking for designers, educators and software developers who want to turn their innovative ideas about learning online into working prototypes in the form of Firefox add-ons. We’ll help you refine your designs and teach you how to create Firefox add-ons using Jetpack and other Mozilla technologies. Participants creating the best prototypes will be invited to the Jetpack for Learning Design Camp and the SXSW Interactive conference in March 2010.” Read the full post at the Mozilla Labs weblog.

Firefox privacy and security
Johnathan Nightingale and Drew Willcoxon have put together two new videos in which they talk about the security and privacy features of Firefox. The security features video covers phishing protection, malware protection, master passwords, the site identity button, and Firefox’s world-class software update system. The privacy video talks about the great new privacy features that were introduced with Firefox 3.5. You can view these at Johnath’s weblog, or through YouTube: Security, Privacy.

On open source and education
Professor David Humphrey, from Seneca College in Toronto, has an
excellent blog post about teaching with open source, and the
incredible impact it has on the value and quality of his students’
education. The article is in response to Joel Spolsky’s post lamenting the general quality of computer science programs and arguing for the inclusion of real-world projects in these programs. This is, of course, exactly what David has been working on at Seneca for five years, and the results have been astonishing. Read David’s full post on his weblog.

Multi-process Fennec
Joe Drew, Olli Pettay, and Benjamin Smedberg have modified Mobile Firefox (aka: Fennec) so it now has a separate process for rendering. “Getting Fennec working was difficult partly because the mobile Firefox code uses a different drawing system. Now that it’s working, we hope to be able to bring additional developers in to fix up the features we hacked around, fix DOM features, and start getting much better measurements for interactive performance and memory usage.” If you’re interested in reading more, seeing a screencast of Fennec in action, or getting involved with Fennec development, head over to Ben’s weblog.

SUMO and Firefox 3.6 progress
Chris Ilias, part of the Firefox Support (SUMO) team, writes, “For the past few weeks we have been gathering a list of changes from Firefox 3.5 to 3.6. The next step is to go through the list of articles and determine which need to be updated, and everyone can help.” Chris’ post goes on to explain exactly what you need to do if you would like to pitch in to get SUMO ready for the upcoming Firefox 3.6 release.

New features in Firebug 1.5
Jan Odvarko has been blogging about some of the new features in Firebug 1.5, including HTTP time monitor, XML explorer, and Net Panel column customization. In his most recent post, Jan talks about the new Break On Next functionality. “This feature extends the idea of breakpoints, which is one of the cornerstones of today’s debugging tools. Its primary goal is breaking the JavaScript execution at a required place in the code that is unknown to the developer beforehand.”

Mozilla Drumbeat: pilot mode
Mozilla Drumbeat is moving into pilot mode. Be a part of Drumbeat and dial in to the weekly Drumbeat Community call. The call is Mondays at 8 a.m. PST. Further information about the call and new Drumbeat newsgroup is available on the Mozilla wiki.

Mozilla.org: new “Get involved” page
The Mozilla.org site has a brand new “Get involved” page, and is looking for help figuring out what steps to take next. “We’ve had a good response so far, but getting the page up is only the beginning for what we could be doing. How do we get more people to this page? What’s the best way to help people get started when they express interest? Would having mentors for different community areas be useful? If you’re interested in these questions, please come by our next contribute group call.”

Building the Mozilla Developer Network
Mozilla’s Marketing and Evangelism teams need your help. “We’re looking for developers from all over the Web to help us build the Mozilla Developer Network. Firefox is an important tool for many developers and as the Web continues to evolve as a platform, we need your input to enable better communication and collaboration to push the Mozilla project forward and make the Web better for everyone.” The first thing you can do is take the MDN Survey, then head over to the Mozilla Hacks weblog to get more information about what the team is working on and how you can help.

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 7-8 – Sofia, Bulgaria – DevGarage

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.

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