about:mozilla - SUMO, Thunderbird, Weave, Embedding, Add-ons, Labs, Summer of Code and more!
In this issue…
- Firefox Screencasts Contest!
- Thunderbird 2.0.0.14 Released
- New Weave weekly meetings
- Mozilla Embedding meet-up, May 8th + 9th
- Pascal Chevrel speaking at University of Sevilla, May 9th
- Add-ons compatibility update
- Mozilla Labs, Higher Education, and New Opportunities
- MozillaLinks interviews MicroB developer, Antonio Gomes
- Mozilla Summer of Code project information
- 2008 Linux Journal Reader’s Choice Awards
- Developer calendar
- Subscribe to the email newsletter
SUMO (support.mozilla.com) and Spread Firefox are joining forces and putting on a Firefox Screencasts contest! “Starting the morning of May 19th on Spread Firefox, we will present the 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 will be allowed to submit screencasts for as many articles as you like, but only one per article. The contest will run until June 15th.
The most exciting part? There will be a winner for each of the 100 articles, and each of the 100 winners will receive a special Firefox Screencast Contest t-shirt. Only 100 of these t-shirts will be made, so this contest is the only way to get this exclusive collector’s item. For more information, head over to the SUMO blog and read the full contest announcement.
As part of Mozilla’s ongoing stability and security update process, Thunderbird 2.0.0.14 is now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux as a free download from www.getthunderbird.com. Due to the security fixes, we strongly recommend that all Thunderbird users upgrade to this latest release. For a list of changes and more information, please review the Thunderbird 2.0.0.14 Release Notes.
If you already have Thunderbird 2.0.0.x, you will receive an automated update notification, or you can apply the update manually by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu.
If you’re still using Thunderbird 1.5.0.x, this version is no longer supported and contains known security vulnerabilities. Please upgrade to Thunderbird 2.0.0.14 as soon as possible.
Starting this week, the Weave project will be holding public meetings once per week. The first meeting will be Wednesday May 7th at 1:00pm Pacific (4:00pm Eastern, 21:00 UTC). Meeting agendas and dial-in information can be found on the Mozilla wiki’s Weave Meetings page.
Mozilla Embedding meet-up, May 8th + 9th
Chris Blizzard would like everyone to know that there is going to be another Mozilla Embedding meet-up in Mountain View on May 8th and 9th (this Thursday and Friday). The goal is to start scoping a new Embedding API and getting some actual code put together. This will be run as an open meeting, so if you’re in the area and you want to attend, please contact Chris. For more information, see Chris’s blog post about this meeting, and his earlier post about the previous meet-up.
Pascal Chevrel speaking at University of Sevilla, May 9th
On Friday May 9th, Pascal Chevrel will be speaking about the organization of the Mozilla project at the Concurso Universitario de Software Libre, organized by the University of Sevilla in Spain.
Alex Polvi has started posting a weekly “State of the Add-ons” report wherein he talks about the status of the top 10 add-ons that are not yet compatible with Firefox 3. This week’s list includes: Skype Toolbar for Firefox, Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer, FoxyTunes, Firebug, and PicLens, among others. For the full list, further details, and information about how to help, read Polvi’s blog post.
Mozilla Labs, Higher Education, and New Opportunities
Aza Raskin has posted some of Mozilla Labs’ goals for this year, which are centered around bringing the open-Web innovation process to a wider community. They’re working on a number of new programs, one of which is a more formal way for engaging with higher education. The Labs team is really excited to find new groups in academia to collaborate with, and this blog post outlines a few of their early efforts. Read the full post at the Mozilla Labs weblog.
MozillaLinks interviews MicroB developer, Antonio Gomes
Antonio Gomes, a MicroB developer, has been interviewed by Percy Cabello of MozillaLinks. Percy writes, “While Mozilla is gradually turning more attention to mobile platforms to expand its presence in the web, there’s another project, MicroB, that is already providing a Mozilla based solution for the Nokia Tablet PC platform.” In the interview, Antonio talks about the MicroB project, the interactions between MicroB and the Mozilla project, MicroB’s relationship to Mobile Firefox, and more. Read the full interview over at the excellent MozillaLinks weblog.
Mozilla Summer of Code project information
The Google Summer of Code (SoC) 2008 is in progress. Over the past three years, SoC has brought together 1500 students and 2000 mentors from 90 countries worldwide. Mozilla has a number of SoC projects underway, ranging from “Natural language parsing for automatic calendar event creation” to building OpenID support into Bugzilla. With eleven projects in all, it’s going to be another exciting and productive summer for Mozilla projects. For more information, including detailed descriptons of all the projects, check out the Mozilla SoC information page.
2008 Linux Journal Reader’s Choice Awards
Both Thunderbird and Firefox have won 2008 Linux Journal Reader’s Choice Awards in the categories of “Favorite E-mail Client” and “Favorite Web Browser”, respectively. Nearly 6000 readers voted this year, so these are really great awards. The official announcement was made on May 1st, and the article announcing the winners can be found over at Linux Journal.
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
- Mac Gecko Meeting
- Performance Infrastructure Meeting
- Performance/Leaks Meeting
- Mozilla 2 Meeting
- Crash Reporter + Analysis Meeting
- Weave Meeting
Thursday
Friday
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