The Mozilla Blog

The New York Times ad…Firefox Flicks…the Firefox crop circle…Operation Firefox…you name it!  The Firefox community is always up to some cool, collaborative way to declare their passion for Firefox.  What better way to do this than band together to set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours?!

It’s a whole lot easier and safer than donning a beard of bees or underwater jump roping. All you have to do is download Firefox 3 when it goes live on Download Day — some time in June. In the meantime check out Download Day Headquarters and pledge to download Firefox 3.  We’ll let you know when Firefox 3 goes out the door, kicking off our 24-hour attempt.

Here are some other ways you can help in the run up to Download Day:

* Get the word out; tell your friends, your neighbors, your grandma, anyone and everyone to participate in Download Day.
* Host a party to download Firefox; you provide the people and we’ll provide the party favors.
* Put a Download Day badge on your blog, profile or website.

With your help the Firefox community can go down in history!  If you have any questions or ideas please drop us a line at worldrecord @ mozilla.com.

Get ready to participate in the Firefox Screencast contest! This is your chance to use your talents and passion for Firefox to create support screencasts for the Firefox Support (SUMO) knowledge base on support.mozilla.com.

We have prepared a list of the top 100 most popular support articles from the SUMO knowledge base and ask YOU to create screencasts for one, two, three, or all of them!  You can enter as many screencasts as you like.  With 100 different articles, anyone can choose whatever article for which they would like to create a screencast.

Mozilla will not be hosting the videos during this contest, so please use a third-party application like Jing to record your screencast and send us the link so we can view it. Ever used Jing?  Here’s a great online demo.  Click “Video Tour” on the front page to see how to use it…it couldn’t be easier!  Just download and begin recording!

All entries will be judged by a team who will look at the submissions and pick the best one for each of the 100 articles. That’s 100 winners!!

What are you waiting for? Go to the Firefox Screencast Contest and start sharing your knowledge!

Any questions? We’ve got the answers.

This Friday, May 23, will be a special day for Mozilla as we’ll be hosting the very first Support Firefox Day*. You’ll get a chance to learn more about Mozilla, Firefox 3, and Firefox Support (SUMO) — and have your voice heard. We’ve got lots of things planned! In particular, we’ve lined up a prestigious group of Mozilla celebrities who will be taking YOUR questions and feedback about a variety of subjects. We’ll also have workshops where we’ll be focusing on user-to-user support, and some of the upcoming goodies in Firefox 3.

Here is the action-packed schedule:

• 8:00 AM PDT - 10:00: Support session #1
• 10:00 – 10:45: Workshop: Supporting Firefox 3 users with Live Chat. In this workshop, you’ll learn all you need to know about the cool user-to-user support solution on SUMO to start helping others. Host: Lucy Connor
• 11:00 - 11:30: Chat with Mike Connor, Developer Lead of Firefox 3. Mike will be taking your questions about the upcoming release of Firefox 3 and all its new features, including the all-new product help (yes, SUMO!)
• 11:30 - 12:30: Support Session #2
• 12:30 - 1:15: Workshop: Learn all about the new bookmark system in Firefox 3 (tags, smart location bar, keywords) to better help others. Host: Dietrich Ayala
• 1:30 – 2:00: Chat with Mike Beltzner, Phenomenologist & Usability Design Expert. This is your chance to get your questions about the Mozilla way of designing software answered straight from the source. You’ll learn, among other things, how user feedback and support continuously loops back into product.
• 2:00 - 3:00: Support Session #3
• 3:00 - 3:45: Workshop: Learn how to troubleshoot Firefox 3 like a pro. You’ll find out more about how Firefox works, and at the same time you’ll become an expert of user-to-user troubleshooting. Host: Matthew Middleton
• 4:00 - 4:30: Chat with John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla Corporation. John will be available to answer your questions about Mozilla, including how it was started, where it’s going, and any other things you can think of.
• 4:30 - 5:00: Chat with Asa Dotzler, Spokesmodel and Storyteller. Asa has been a part of Mozilla since the very early days and is the perfect person to ask your questions — any questions — about… anything!

Of course, the big highlight of the day will be the best new Firefox 3 feature of all: Firefox’s new user-based support system. All throughout the day, we’ll be showcasing the various aspects to the support system: from the collaboratively written knowledge base to the forums and chat-based support and inviting you to take part. We’ll be around all day in #sumo to answer questions and help you get started helping your fellow users and Firefox enthusiasts.

Hope to see you on Friday! If you’re coming, please let us know so we can better plan the events.

*) OK, we did host something similar that we called SUMO Day last month, but with the new name, we think this is a fresh start.

Editor’s note: Mozilla announced Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1 on Friday, May 16, 2008. See Mike Beltzner’s comprehensive post on Mozilla Developer News, crossposted below.

Firefox 3 Release Candidate now available for download

Please note: The Firefox 3 Release Candidate is a public preview release intended for developer testing and community feedback. It includes new features as well as dramatic improvements to performance, memory usage and speed. We recommend that you read the release notes and known issues before installing this release.

The first Firefox 3 Release Candidate is now available for download. This milestone is focused on testing the core functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform scheduled for Firefox 3. Ongoing planning for Firefox 3 can be followed at the Firefox 3 Planning Center, as well as in mozilla.dev.planning and on irc.mozilla.org in #granparadiso.

New features and changes in this milestone:

• Improvements to the user interface based on user feedback, including changes to the look and feel on Windows Vista, Windows XP, Mac OS X and Linux.
• Changes and fixes for new features such as the location bar autocomplete, bookmark backup and restore, full page zoom, and others, based on feedback from our community.
• Fixes and improvements to platform features to improve security, web compatibility and stability.
• Continued performance improvements: changes to our JavaScript engine as well as profile guided optimization continues to improve performance over previous releases as measured by the popular SunSpider test from Apple, and in the speed of web applications like Google Mail and Zoho Office.

(You can find out more about all of these features in the “What’s New” section of the release notes.)

Testers can download the Firefox 3 Release Candidate builds for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux in over 45 different languages. Developers should also read the Firefox 3 for Developers article on the Mozilla Developer Center.

Note: Please do not link directly to the download site. Instead we strongly encourage you to link to this Firefox 3 Release Candidate announcement so that everyone will know what this milestone is, what they should expect, and who should be downloading to participate in testing at this stage of development.

One of our Mozilla Campus Reps came up with the idea last year, and we recently launched the Mozilla “On the Street” interviews project!

With the Firefox 3 release just around the corner, I thought now would be the perfect time to get our Campus Reps out there to: A.) find out what people have to say about Firefox in general, and B.) spread the word about Firefox 3.

It’s a busy time for a lot of our Campus Reps, but we hope to get some great video footage before they take off for the summer. We have students from over 30 countries representing Mozilla at their colleges and universities, so it will be great to see their interviews from cities and campuses around the world!

I think this is a project that we can eventually open up to the entire Mozilla community and provide everyone with the opportunity to be a broadcast reporter for a day. :-)  But first, let’s see what our Mozilla Campus Reps can come up with…