chofmann's weblog

New PC Retailer Gives Discount to FireFox Users

Cool!

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/1/prweb601572.htm

Active X Migration Guides?

Doron and others have produced a great guides that help in migrating away from proprietary IE features that aren't available in browsers that support and are compliant with web standards.

Stuff like http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/index.php?title=Migrate_apps_from_Internet_Explorer_to_Mozillahttp://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/index.php?title=Migrate_apps_from_Internet_Explorer_to_Mozilla

Does anyone know if similar guides, case histories, or best practices exist for developers that want to migrate away from ActiveX?

Ramping up Firefox Support Option Discussions and Work on Improvements

Back at the end of last year I started a thread seeking some ideas on how we might improve support for Firefox users. There was a lot of great feedback from folks that are involved in helping Firefox users in a variety of ways using a number of different systems. A few of us a Moco (Sam Sidler, JT Batson, and Jay Patel) have carved out some dedicated time over the next few months work on some of the suggestions made in the thread on Mozillazine, and engaging with others that want to help out on improving the support systems we currently have in place. We will also be interested in looking at possible new systems that could help solve some of the existing problems.

We will be kicking off some weekly conference calls, setting up a newsgroup, and possible "support summit" for those that have interest in this area. Watch for more details soon. I've also posted a summary of the prolems/suggestions that have been surface in the past few months. You can view those here:

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=494282&postdays=0&postorder=asc&postsperpage=15&start=60

Building better support options for Firefox users

I've started some discussion on the topic at http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=494282

If you have thoughts, comments, or ideas about improvements for this area I'd be interested in hearing about them in the forum or e-mail to me...

Location entry now available to drive Minimo Map.

Google has added a geocoding API so we updated the minimo map service to add a form entry bar and use the service to position the map. It makes driving the map and quick access to locations a bit easier. Here is what it looks like.

More info about the new gecoding API and type of entries supported in the form entry can be found here.

AJAX Mobile Map Apps on Minimo

In the next rounds of development for Minimo we are focusing a bit on testing and creating some good support for mobile web based mapping applications. A recent Pew Internet study and other research indicates this is very high growth area for mobile devices and a feature highly desired by about half of all mobile device users. With the gecko desktop browser engine in Minimo we should be able to tap into a wide variety of interesting AJAX map applications that are being developed across the web and made to work well with the Firefox browser. We have done some research and testing in the last few weeks and have some interesting results.

Summer of Code Project moving to the next stage

On May 1 we will be moving to the next stage of the Summer of Code Project sponsored by Google.

The Mozilla Project idea list ( http://wiki.mozilla.org/Community:SummerOfCode06 ) has been created with about 37 project ideas. 12 project Mentors have signed up to review student proposals and serve as Mentors for any of projects that are approved.

On May 1 students will begin submitting proposals targeted at the Mozilla Project idea list, or other ideas that they might have come up with. All student proposals are due by 17:00 Pacific Daylight Time. Information about how students can participate in the program can be found at http://code.google.com/soc/studentfaq.html