In this issue…

And, we’re back!
After a hiatus the about:mozilla newsletter is off the ground again for the new year — apologies for the delay.  A very special thanks goes out to Deb Richardson who created and wrote the newsletter for the last few years. We appreciate all her hard work and dedication, and have discovered just how hard it is!  From here on out the newsletter will be written by Mozilla’s new contributor engagement team.

Firefox 4 Beta 10 is here
Firefox 4 Beta 10 went out the door on Jan 25 and has improved performance and stability with better memory usage, remote blacklisting for hardware acceleration and improved Flash support for Mac OS X users. Please take some time to update and test it. We count on the feedback of our 2 million plus beta testing community to help make Firefox 4 even better.

Write some docs, get an MDN t-shirt
The Mozilla Developer Network is hosting a virtual sprint to write documentation on MDN starting on Jan 28 at 14:00 UTC (6:00 am US PST) and ending on Jan 29 at 23:59 UTC (4:00 pm US PST).  You can participate from wherever you are and at any time during the 36 hour sprint. See the doc sprint planning page for more details.

Create the official Firefox 4 t-shirt
Your design could become the official Firefox 4 launch shirt. Join the Mozilla Creative Collective Challenge and submit your design by March 28. The top 5 designs will be selected and then put up for vote. Check out the MCC for more details and how to enter.

A new Mozilla Park
Tumucumaque (can you say that?) Park is live in English, Japanese and Brazilian Portuguese. Mozilla has partnered with the World Wildlife Fund to raise funds for world’s largest tropical forest park. Stay tuned for a Twitter visualization of the park soon!

Do not Track: Opting-out of behavioral ads
As part of Mozilla’s efforts to give users greater control over their own data, we’re working towards a HTTP header that all Firefox users can elect to inform ad networks that they don’t want to be tracked. Sid Stamm wrote about his proposal earlier this week which resulted in broad media coverage, including the Wall Street Journal.

Get your vote on
As you may recall Mozilla Drumbeat and the Transmediale Festival are working together on a new award to spur art and creativity using open web technology. Mark Surman writes that the jury has narrowed it down to three finalists and it’s time to get your vote in. Voting ends February 4 and the award will be presented at the Transmediale Festival in Berlin.

Women in Mozilla Survey
Women & Mozilla (or WoMoz) is conducting a survey that you might have seen to gain more insight on women participating within the open source software community using Mozilla as an example. The findings will be shared at FOSDEM on Sunday, Feb 6 (see schedule). Please take a moment to fill it out and share with your peers (http://j.mp/womoz-survey).

Make Bugzilla pretty
Max writes that the deadline for the making Bugzilla beautiful contest is just around the corner – Feb 28. If you’re a user experience designer please check it out. You’ve got a chance at fame and making the Mozilla community and all developers who use Bugzilla smile.

People of HTML5: Rob Hawkes
Chris Heilmann has been highlighting HTML5 experts on the MozHacks blog, including video interviews. This week Chris brings us Rob Hawkes author of Rawkets and a presenter at the recent Game On 2010 event in London. Chris writes “The message I really loved getting from Rob was that it is OK to use any  technology you want and that there is a benefit to people messing  around with your code – even if it is to game the system.”  Check out Rob’s interview and other recent people of HTML5.

More from Prospector: Home Dash
Edward Lee is back again with a new experiment — Home Dash — that gets us closer to browse-based browsing. This latest experiment “removes all the standard web browser interface like the location bar, search bar and tabs; and leaves behind just a Firefox logo that is used to bring up a dashboard.” It’s been released and as always Labs would like your feedback.

Software updates
* Thunderbird 3.3 Alpha 2

Upcoming events
* Jan 28-29, Virtual, MDN Virtual Doc Sprint
* Feb 5-6, Brussels, Belgium, FOSDEM 2011
* Feb 12, Mountain View, CA, Dare 2b Digital 2011
* March 1 – 5, Hannover, Germany, CeBIT
* April 9-10, Bulgaria Web Summit 2011

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 Mozilla’s contributor engagement team and will be published every Tuesday. This week’s issue is brought to you by Mary Colvig.

If you have any news, announcements, events, or software releases you would like to have included in our next issue, please send them to: about-mozilla[at]mozilla.com.

You can also subscribe to the email version!