seth’s blog

Grassroots evangelism: Sites that actively block browsers other than I.E.

October 16th, 2007 by seth bindernagel with no comments »

The site below has been sent to me from a few people and I thought I would put it out there in case others haven’t seen it.

http://toastytech.com/good/badsitelistframe.html

The opening quote from the site:

“The following is a list of sites that actively block browsers other than Internet Explorer or have some serious problem that prevents the site from being usable in Firefox. Come on people! Its 2007 already, NOT 1997! Get with this century! There is no excuse for these kinds of sites!”

As a sports fan, I was surprised to see that http://sports.yahoo.com/ncaaf/gamechannel was on the list and so I visited the site. Sure enough, here is the screen shot.

I guess that’s why I never go to sports.yahoo.com/ncaaf/gamechannel to catch up on the Cal Golden Bears or Ohio State Buckeyes games.

It would be nice to get some of these sites to come around, so many thanks to those who helped put this together. And, as the creator of the site mentions:

“Despite all of that, if you choose to send e-mail to the web masters please do not flame them, send something constructive like the Mozilla Site Evangelism Letters“
FSOSS

October 3rd, 2007 by seth bindernagel with 2 comments »

I am going to Toronto October 25 and 26 to attend Seneca College’s FSOSS. How psyched am I to be heading up North? For one, maybe I finally will get to meet these guys.

OK, maybe not, but I am psyched to be attending this two-day event that will bring together open source enthusiasts, educators, and developers to talk about a free and open web. In addition to attending the conference, I am looking forward to chatting with Dave Humphrey who has been a great friend of Mozilla and has really done so much to bring newcomers into the Mozilla project. David, Shaver and I have bounced ideas back and forth for some time now, so it will be nice to see him again in person to see where else Mozilla can help provide leverage to build more communities. I am especially interested to see how David and Seneca have progressed with their Mozilla curriculum development.

So, whoever is going to be there, please look me up. Canadian friends, should I bring my winter coat?
Mozilla 24 Takes On Accessibility

September 10th, 2007 by seth bindernagel with no comments »

Have you checked it out? In a prior post, I blogged about Mozilla 24 and all the things you can do to participate. For my part of the conference, I’ve helped plan an hour-and-a-half session about accessibility efforts at Mozilla. Here is the short description:
1. A discussion on new accessibility features in Firefox 3
2. Demos from interesting projects like Access Firefox
3. How a blind developer performs QA and testing for Mozilla
4. A blind contributor shows off Firefox 3’s best features with a screen reader and his own nightly build of Firefox.
In the spirit of 24, the team of presenters is truly international. I will be in Tokyo, helping to organize the conference and emcee-ing the session. One group will present from Mumbai, India. Then, we’ll have 2 contributors from Boston. Our final participant will be dialing in from San Diego at 4:30 AM!!!

I’d love to hear if you’re up-all-night with Mozilla during 24. I will be!

Please check out our accessibility session, it will be very cool.

FOSS.IN Project Day Accepted!

September 7th, 2007 by seth bindernagel with no comments »

Mozilla has been accepted for a project day at FOSS.IN in Bangalore in India this December. FOSS.IN is the largest open source conference in India and we are so thrilled to be a part of it this year.

Project Days at FOSS.IN are not presentations about an open source project. They are meant for community members (both for new contributors and long-time participants) to get together to work on the project. We have created a very packed schedule for extension developers, localizers, and bug testers to come together to work on Mozilla. Here is the proposed schedule:

Name of the project:
Mozilla Project Day, Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Url:
http://wiki.mozilla.org/DeveloperDays/FOSS.INDecember2007

Date:
(Proposed day) December 5, 2007

Name of the proposer:
Seth Bindernagel, Mary Colvig, Chris Hofmann, Mark Finkle & Axel Hecht

Proposers involvement in the Project:
Mozilla will send a team of employees to help lead a Mozilla Developer Day with the Indian Developer Community.

Pre-requisites to participate:
Interest in learning more about Mozilla. All participants are welcome. During the project day, we would like to shine some light on Indian contributors, specifically mentioning where work has been done. It will be most helpful for Mozilla Indian contributors to participate and discuss what they have been contributing. Some knowledge of the localization process or knowledge of the XUL programming language, JavaScript, and/or the Mozilla platform would be helpful, but is not required.

Audience:
application developers, extension developers, open-source evangelists & enthusiasts, localizers, security experts

Handouts to be distributed with pointers to material:
Most materials will be distributed electronically or developed for all to see and contribute to through the following wiki site: http://wiki.mozilla.org/DeveloperDays/FOSS.INDecember2007

Proposed Schedule for the Day
Theme of the day: Building a Mozilla Community and getting Firefox working better in India
(We hope to have two concurrent project plans, one discussing how to get involved with Mozilla via the extension development platform. The other describing how to get involved through either the QA/Testing or localization efforts.)

Time	Activity
09:30 – 10:00	Opening remarks about the developer day by Mozilla employees who are in attendance and will lead the day
10:00 – 10:45	Introduction to Mozilla by a Mozilla Senior executive describing the state of the Mozilla Project and its community
10:45 – 11:00	Break
11:00 – 11:45	Attack of the Indian font problems (bring your favorite site that doesn’t render correctly in Firefox — we’ll identify problems, reduce test cases, file bugs)
11:45 – 12:25	Become a Mozilla evangelist: Blogging, speaking, evangelizing to websites (i.e. how to find sites that need to be contacted and how to do that. How to file bugs that are Mozilla related issues, and not a the problem of a website, and more)
12:25 – 13:15	Lunch
13:15 – 14:15	Plan A: Lightning demos of extensions developed by local developers and Chrome Java Script Libraries or Plan B: How to Localize in India, with a sprint to the end of the day.
14:15 – 15:45	Plan A: Extension development tutorial/intro to FUEL, or Plan B: Continuation of localization sprint
15:45 – 16:00	Break
16:00 – 16:30	Plan A: Intro to Babelzilla; Plan B: continuation of localization sprint
16:30 – 17:00	Closing remarks, party

Other ideas to include in the tracks above:

QA sprint — Introduction to the Mozilla QA process and then have folks do ready to testing on different platforms. (We might need to do this because as Mozilla comes closer to the release of Firefox 3, having a localization sprint might not be feasible.)
Localization hands on workshop and/or Testing Day — Will depend on release schedule of Firefox.
Need to keep it focus on empowering users and developers
Presentation of developer tools that will help you better develop web content: Fuel & Firebug/Finkle

Foss.IN Project Day

August 8th, 2007 by seth bindernagel with 5 comments »

I believe that Foss.IN is India’s largest open source conference, but I could be wrong about that. Either way, it is taking place this year from December 4 – 8, 2007 in Bangalore. Chofmann and I are thinking of submitting an application for a Project Day, but we would need to make sure we can get enough participation from our Indian developer community. We’d also consider sending some Mozilla Mountain View developers if we do organize a big enough group. Chofmann, Mary (Leader of Mozilla Events), and I will talk about it on Friday.

Thoughts?