August 2006 Archives

FireBug, "all of the tools you need to poke, prod, and monitor your JavaScript, CSS, HTML and Ajax" is about to make another major leap forward. Its developer, the amazing Joe Hewitt, has a growing list of fixes and features he's going to tackle for the FireBug 0.5 release and he's calling for your input.

Head over to Joe's blog and tell him what you'd like to see in the next version.

And if you're a web developer and you haven't used this outstanding Firefox extension yet, get it now! FireBug will change the way you work. It's got "a debugger, error console, command line, and a variety of fun inspectors" joined in a sexy clean and eminently usable interface. No one does it like Joe does it.

Mozilla is hosting the latest Lunch 2.0 event this Thursday, August 31^st. Come on over and get a behind the scenes look at the Mozilla HQ and connect with the people building the next two versions of Firefox.

Where: Mozilla, 1981 Landings Drive, Building K, Mountain View, CA 94043
When: Thursday, August 31^st, 12-1:30 PM
Who: Lunch 2.0 is open to everyone. RSVP here (required)

I realize that it's been almost 4 years since the first "public" release of what would eventually be called Firefox, but that's not ancient history and it's definitely no excuse for Paul Ramsey's ridiculous claims that Firefox (and other open source projects) would not be user focused without "a large and ongoing firehose of money".

Paul, because you clearly weren't paying attention back then, and you haven't taken the time to educate yourself since, let me share a bit of history with you.

Firefox was born when a small handful of open source developers decided, without any financial support, and as a completely volunteer project, to build a Web browser that could attract millions of regular user and give them a better Web experience.

There was not only no financial support for the Firefox project (then called m/b for the directory in CVS where the new browser lived) there was no formal Mozilla community or project support and definitely no support from the large companies contributing to the development of the old Mozilla suite of applications.

With the exception of Brendan Eich's permission to create the CVS directory on mozilla.org's server, the project was an independent venture with the sole purpose of proving that open source (and in particular, that handful of open source developers) could build a better Web browser for regular users -- that open source could be explicitly "about users".

That little splinter project had millions of regular users long before it ever became a formal Mozilla project and when it was blessed as the premier Mozilla application by the newly formed non-profit Mozilla Foundation, the Foundation was fewer than 10 people and had zero (ZERO) revenue. The Foundation employed one (ONE) Firefox developer full-time.

We continued to build the open source Firefox Web browser and invested heavily (time and effort, not cash) in the community that would develop, test, and support it for well over a year before there was any inkling of a revenue stream from Firefox itself.

During that time, we worked hard to build a large base of regular end users as well as a thriving open source community. Along with the millions of end users we had (again, before there was any (ANY) revenue coming from Firefox) we built an open source end user support community, an open source help documentation community, and an open source marketing community -- investments all clearly targeted at the users you so casually scorn with your close-minded "open source is not about users, it is about developers" declaration.

You may have failed (or decided not to even try) to build a product for users and to attract users to that product, but that hardly qualifies you to hand down edicts about what open source is or isn't about.

As many of you noted in emails over the last six months or so, yes, the old Ask Asa feature and the Ask a Mozilla Developer features have been missing for a long time.

Well, Mike Schroepfer is cutting out the middle man (me), bringing back the wonderful developer chat series started by Chris Nelson of MozillaZine so many years ago, and inviting you all to join him for a Q&A and chat at 11am PDT Friday September 1, 2006 on irc.mozilla.org, channel #mozillazine.

I think this is a great idea and I hope we can organize a weekly event like this where we bring core Mozilla people to IRC for an hour to talk about what's going in their part of the Mozilla universe.

Do you consider yourself part of Mozilla's volunteer community? If so, you'll want to join the discussion over at Seth's blog.

We're in the very early stages of building a program to increase Mozilla's support for our volunteer community. This effort is called "The Community Giving Program" and with it we aim to find ways to use a portion of Mozilla's revenue to support and strengthen the activities of the Mozilla community.

It's your program and we need you to help us get it up and running. The best way you can help right now is participating in the conversation.

A planet orbits a star, has enough mass that it's mostly spherical, and is large enough that it's cleared its orbit.

I've received a number of emails and IMs asking me what I think of this definition and what it means for Pluto. My answer is that I love it. No because it demotes Pluto (though that doesn't bother me one bit.) I love it because millions of people all across this jumpin' green sphere are reading about and talking about astronomy and that can only be good.

Matt and John's crop circle video podcast is a blast. Check it out.

I'm sitting here with my Leopard preview install DVD and I can't work up the courage to just blow away Tiger on my only Mac (my primary machine -- a MBP.) Heck, I don't even know if Firefox runs on Leopard.

My first thought was to install Leopard under Parallels on my MBP -- just the way I do Vista under VMWare on my Thinkpad. Apparently that's not possible since Leopard will only install on genuine Mac hardware and Parallels is virtual hardware, even if it's running on a Mac.

My second thought was dual-boot. It looks like Apple's Boot Camp is really designed for setting up Windows on a second partition. I'd like the easy tools for partitioning and boot managing, but I'm not installing Windows. I'm installing Leopard.

Will Boot Camp give me what I want here? Is there some other simple solution that gives me easy partitioning (without dataloss on my existing Tiger installation) and gives me a nice boot manager? Have any of you done this yet? Is it worth it?

Read about Mozilla Labs.

Give until it hurts. These guys do some great work and your donation really matters. Thanks.

Firefox has an amazing history, from the first local builds of m/b through the many name changes to mainstream acceptance with tens of millions of users -- and it's far from complete. It's been a classic underdog story with more drama, more laughs, and more thrills than any other project I've been involved with.

Many of you are playing a role in this amazing story today and who better to tell the story of Firefox than the people who are living it. There's a brand new project you'll want to join called The Fox Tales. At The Fox Tales, you'll find other great underdog stories and you'll be able to contribute the our favorite underdog story -- the tale of Firefox.

Head over to The Fox Tales and write your chapter today.

Seth Bindernagel, a very cool guy that's come to Mozilla to help us design and implement a "community giving program" has just started a blog. Head over to seth's blog and read his introductory post.

I met Seth a couple of months ago and have been working closely with him over the last few weeks and I can't tell you how excited I am to have him here and working on a program that's been at the front of my mind for many years.

I'm looking for a laptop bag for this new macbook pro (which doesn't quite fit right in my older PC bag.) I want something extremely light but not as simple as just a sleeve. The bag should be sized correctly for the 15.4" mbp and should have room to carry a power supply and an extra battery.

The two I've found so far that I like are the MacCase Sling and the LEVertigo. I haven't seen either of these bags in person so I'm not sure whether or not I'll actually like carrying either of them. I do like the bright interior of the Sling. If any of you have any experience with either of these or have recommendations for light-weight bags, please let me know.