about:mozilla - 10 years, Firefox 3 beta freeze, Mozilla mobile, APNG, and more
In this issue…
- Mozilla: celebrating the first ten years
- Firefox 3 Beta 3 code freeze today!
- EV certs being displayed in Firefox 3 nightlies
- Mozilla Mobile prototype user-interfaces posted
- Mozilla Europe will be at Solutions Linux and OpenSource 2008 in Paris, Jan 29-31
- Firefox 2.0.0.12 scheduled for release on February 12
- “Add-on Hygiene” Hacking Social: Tonight!
- Super Techies interview: Brendan Eich
- New APNG portal site
- Add-on developers: time to start updating for Firefox 3!
- Developer calendar
- Subscribe to the email newsletter
Mozilla: celebrating the first ten years
On January 22nd 1998, Netscape first announced plans to release the source code for Netscape Communicator, laying the foundation for the Mozilla Project. Now, ten years later, Mitchell Baker writes, “2008 is a year to celebrate — Mozilla turns 10 this year. 10 years of open source history, commitment, product development, community building and accomplishments. An open source project of astonishing scope and diversity. A portion of the Internet that is more open and participatory than almost anyone imagined. A strong voice for what the Internet can be. That’s 10 amazing years.” Read the rest of Mitchell’s post on her blog.
Firefox 3 Beta 3 code freeze today!
Just a reminder that the Firefox 3 Beta 3 code freeze is today, with the string freeze for localization last Friday. The plan is to have a quiet freeze for the rest of the week before starting builds, on the same timeline as used for Beta 2. With this schedule, builds should begin the morning of Monday, February 4th. For further information see Mike Connor’s and Mike Beltzner’s posts to mozilla.dev.planning.
EV certs being displayed in Firefox 3 nightlies
EV support has been turned on in the nightly Firefox 3 builds, and the Verisign EV root has been activated for testing purposes. What this means is that when you go to sites that have Verisign-issued EV certificates — as, for example, the British Airways site — the site-identity button will pick up the name of the site owner and display it with a green background. For more information, screenshots, and a request for feedback and testing, see Johnathan Nightingale’s blog post.
Mozilla Mobile prototype user-interfaces posted
The Mozilla Mobile team has posted two prototype mobile user-interfaces for you to play with, one for button-driven devices, and one for touch screen devices. Now is a great time to get involved with the mobile project, as the team would like feedback on these UIs. More information is available on Doug Turner’s weblog, and Ars Technica has published a short article about the prototypes.
Mozilla Europe will be at Solutions Linux and OpenSource 2008 in Paris, Jan 29-31
Mozilla Europe will be at the Solutions Linux and OpenSource 2008 conference in Paris from January 29th (today) through January 31st. Drop by the Mozilla Europe booth to say hello, or attend the conferences they’ll be involved with during the event.
Firefox 2.0.0.12 scheduled for release on February 12
Firefox 2.0.0.12 is in code freeze and is currently scheduled for a February 12th release. More information about the release and schedule is available on the Firefox 2.0.0.12 release wiki page.
“Add-on Hygiene” Hacking Social: Tonight!
Join Mozilla hackers and hobbyists at Mozilla HQ in Mountain View for pizza and drinks tonight at 6:00pm. They’ll be giving an overview of what it is like to be an editor on addons.mozilla.org, and from there will be reviewing and testing unreleased extensions. More information is available on the Upcoming events page, where you should RSVP if you’re planning to attend!
Super Techies interview: Brendan Eich
“In a Super Techies interview, Mozilla CTO Brendan Eich talks to ZDNet Editor in Chief Dan Farber about his career as a programmer in Silicon Valley. Eich discusses his early work at Netscape creating the JavaScript programming language, battling Microsoft in the browser wars, and his current role at Mozilla, overseeing new technology enhancements for the company’s flagship Firefox browser.” View the video at ZDNet.
Stuart Parmenter blogs, “I received word recently from Brendan Sera-Shriar at Seneca College about this APNG portal site that he, along with folks from PHUG, got off the ground recently. The site looks great and should help provide a wealth of information about a great new feature in Firefox 3 (and Opera 9.5 and other products to follow). They’ve got several cool samples up and I’m sure they’d love to add more if you’ve got them.”
Add-on developers: time to start updating for Firefox 3!
Mark Finkle writes, “We have been putting out the call for extension developers to start the process of updating their extension to work in Firefox 3. It’s never fun when your extension breaks because of changes in Firefox, but everyone wants to make the platform better. In doing so, we had to break some eggs.” There’s lots of information available to help you get your add-ons ready for Firefox 3, including: Firefox 3 for Developers, Updating extensions for Firefox 3, Ensuring compatibility of add-ons and themes for Firefox 3, and Mark’s blog posts, among others. There’s also an IRC channel where you can get help: #extdev on the irc.mozilla.org server.
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