Joel Maher: Introducing a contributor for the WebDriver Infrastructure project |
As I previously announced who will be working on Pulse Guardian and the Web Platform Tests Results Explorer, let me introduce who will be working on Web Platform Tests – WebDriver Infrastructure:
* Ravi Shankar (:waffles on IRC) –
What interests you in this specific project?
There are several. Though I love coding, I’m usually more inclined to Python & Rust (so, a “Python project” is what excited me at first). Then, my recently-developed interest in networking code (ever since my work on a network-related issue in Servo), and finally, I’m very curious about how we’re establishing the Python-JS communication and emulate user inputs.
What do you plan to get out of this after 8 weeks?
Over the past few months of my (fractional) contributions to Mozilla, I’ve always learned something useful whenever I finish working on a bug/issue. Since this is a somewhat “giant” implementation that requires more time and commitment, I think I’ll learn some great deal of stuff in relatively less time (which is what excites me).
Are there any interesting facts/hobbies that you would like to share so others can enjoy reading about you?
Well, I juggle, or I (try to) reproduce some random music in my flute (actually, a Bansuri – Indian flute) when I’m away from my keyboard.
We look forward to working with Ravi over the next 8 weeks. Please say hi in irc when you see :waffles in channel :)
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Joel Maher: Introducing 2 contributors for the Web Platform Tests project |
As I previously announced who will be working on Pulse Guardian, let me introduce who will be working on Web Platform Tests – Results Explorer:
* Kalpesh Krishna (:martianwars on irc) –
What interests you in this specific project?
I have been contributing to Mozilla for a couple of months now and was keen on taking up a project on a slightly larger scale. This particular project was recommended to me by Manish Goregaokar. I had worked out a few issues in Servo prior to this and all involved Web Platform Tests in some form. That was the initial motivation. I find this project really interesting as it gives me a chance to help build an interface that will simplify browser comparison so much! This project seems to have more of planning rather than execution, and that’s another reason that I’m so excited! Besides, I think this would be a good chance to try out some statistics / data visualization ideas I have, though they might be a bit irrelevant to the goal.
What do you plan to get out of this after 8 weeks?
I plan to learn as much as I can, make some great friends, and most importantly make a real sizeable contribution to open source :)
Are there any interesting facts/hobbies that you would like to share so others can enjoy reading about you?
I love to star gaze. Constellations and Messier objects fascinate me. Given a chance, I would love to let my imagination run wild and draw my own set of constellations! I have an unusual ambition in life. Though a student of Electrical Engineering, I have always wanted to own a chocolate factory (too much Roald Dahl as a child) and have done some research regarding the same. Fingers crossed! I also love to collect Rubiks Cube style puzzles. I make it a point to increase my collection by 3-4 puzzles every semester and learn how to solve them. I’m not fast at any of them, but love solving them!
* Daniel Deutsch –
What interests you in this specific project?
I am really interested in getting involved in Web Standards. Also, I am excited to be involved in a project that is bigger than itself–something that spans the Internet and makes it better for everyone (web authors and users).
What do you plan to get out of this after 8 weeks?
As primarily a Rails developer, I am hoping to expand my skill-set. Specifically, I am looking forward to writing some Python and learning more about JavaScript. Also, I am excited to dig deeper into automated testing. Lastly, I think Mozilla does a lot of great work and am excited to help in the effort to drive the web forward with open source contribution.
Are there any interesting facts/hobbies that you would like to share so others can enjoy reading about you?
I live in Brooklyn, NY and have terrible taste in music. I like writing long emails, running, and Vim.
We look forward to working with these great 2 hackers over the next 8 weeks.
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Joel Maher: Introducing a contributor for the Pulse Guardian project |
3 weeks ago we announced the new Quarter of Contribution, today I would like to introduce the participants. Personally I really enjoy meeting new contributors and learning about them. It is exciting to see interest in all 4 projects. Let me introduce who will be working on Pulse Guardian – Core Hacker:
Mike Yao –
What interests you in this specific project?
Python, infrastructure
What do you plan to get out of this after 8 weeks?
Continue to contribute to Mozilla
Are there any interesting facts/hobbies that you would like to share so others can enjoy reading about you?
Cooking/food lover, I was chef long time ago. Free software/Open source and Linux changed my mind and career.
I do recall one other eager contributor who might join in late when exams are completed, meanwhile, enjoy learning a bit about Mike Yao (who was introduced to Mozilla by Mike Ling who did our first every Quarter of Contribution).
https://elvis314.wordpress.com/2015/11/20/introducing-a-contributor-for-the-pulse-guardian-project/
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Mozilla Fundraising: Our plan for fundraising A/B testing in 2015 |
https://fundraising.mozilla.org/our-plan-for-fundraising-ab-testing-in-2015/
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Daniel Stenberg: This post was not bought |
At times I post blog articles that get the view counter go up to and beyond 50,000 views. This puts me in a position where I get offers from companies to mention them or to “cooperate” on further blog posts that would somehow push their agenda or businesses.
I also get the more simple offers of adding random ads or “text only information” on specific individual pages on my sites that some SEO person out there figured out could potentially attract audience that search for specific terms.
I’ve even gotten offers from a company to sell off my server logs. Allegedly to help them work on anti-fraud so possibly for a good cause, but still…
This is by no counts a “big” blog or site, yet I get a steady stream of individuals and companies offering me money to give up a piece of my soul. I can only imagine what more popular sites get and it is clear that someone with a less strict standpoint than mine could easily make an extra income that way.
I turn down all those examples of “easy money”.
I want to be able to look you, my dear readers, straight in the eyes when I say that what’s written here are my own words and the opinions revealed are my own – even if of course you may not agree with me and I may do mistakes and be completely wrong at times or even many times. You can rest assured that I did the mistakes on my own and I was not paid by anyone to do them.
I’ve also removed ads from most of my sites and I don’t run external analytic scripts, minimizing the privacy intrusions and optimizing the contents: the stuff downloaded from my sites are what your browser needs to render the page. Not heaps of useless crap to show ads or to help anyone track you (in order to show more targeted ads).
I don’t judge others’ actions based on how I decide to run my blog. I’m in a fortunate position to take this stand, I realize that.
This all said, I’m still employed by a company (Mozilla) that pays my salary and I work on several projects that are dear to me so of course I will show bias to some subjects. I don’t claim to have an objective view on things and I don’t even try to have that. When I write posts here, they come colored by my background and by what I am.
http://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2015/11/20/this-post-was-not-bought/
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Justin Dolske: Foxkeh Dance is back! |
That’s right! Everyone’s favorite dancing mascot is back, baby!
Back in 2008, Alex Polvi (of Firefox crop circle fame), departed Mozilla to found his own startup. In one of the most epic farewell emails of all time, he created Foxkeh Dance, a Mozilla flavor of the Internet-classic Hampster Dance site.
Alas, domains expire, and for the last 5 years foxkehdance.com has been the home of a domain squatter hoping to interest you in the usual assortment of spam. But a few weeks ago, I randomly checked the site, and discovered it was available for registration! So I grabbed the domain, and set about restoring it.
The ever-amazing Archive.org has a cached version of the original 7-year-old site from August 24th 2008… Mostly. It has the HTML, but not the images or background music. Luckily a couple of contemporaneous Mozilla community sites included copies of the animated images, and from that I was able to restore what I believe are original versions. (Update: it seems archive.org is now using these newly-restored images to fill in their incomplete cache. Curious.) While the original embedded “hamster.mp3” file is lost, I remember it a being a straight copy of the Hampster Dance site, and that’s easily available. Of course, the original site used plugins to play sound, so I’ve updated it to use a modern HTML5
And now Foxkehdance.com is back!
For those unfamiliar, Foxkeh is Mozilla Japan’s cartoon mascot. Recently it’s been the unofficial mascot of the new Tracking Protection feature in Firefox (butt flames and all). I hope we’ll see more of the ‘lil guy in the future!
You may now resume dancing.
https://dolske.wordpress.com/2015/11/20/foxkeh-dance-is-back/
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Mozilla Addons Blog: Add-on Compatibility for Firefox 43 |
Firefox 43 will be released on December 15th. Here’s the list of changes that went into this version that can affect add-on compatibility. There is more information available in Firefox 43 for Developers, so you should also give it a look.
contentaccessible=yes, no matter how it is loaded, which means that add-ons loading XBL into content will probably need to add it.nsIDOMHTMLCanvasElement::MozFetchAsStream(). This was a non-standard, internal use function, but a few add-ons used it. Give the canvas documentation a look for possible alternatives.nsIQuotaManager and nsIUsageCallback.nsIDocShell, nsIDocShellLoadInfo, nsISHEntry. However, these changes should only break compatibility if you are interacting with these components on a binary level.xpinstall.signatures.required in about:config), but the current plan is to drop the preference in Firefox 44.Please let me know in the comments if there’s anything missing or incorrect on these lists. If your add-on breaks on Firefox 43, I’d like to know.
The automatic compatibility validation and upgrade for add-ons on AMO will happen in the coming weeks, so keep an eye on your email if you have an add-on listed on our site with its compatibility set to Firefox 42.
https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/11/19/compatibility-for-firefox-43/
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Chris Cooper: Clarification about our “Build and Release Intern - Toronto” position |
We’ve had lots of interest already in our advertised internship position, and that’s great. However, many of the applications I’ve looked at won’t pan out because they overlooked a key line in the posting:
*Only local candidates will be considered for this role.*
That’s right, we’re only able to accept interns who are legally able to work in Canada.
The main reason behind this is that all of our potential mentors are in Toronto, and having an engaged, local mentor is one of the crucial determinants of a successful internship. In the past, it was possible for Mozilla to sponsor foreign students to come to Canada for internships, but recent changes to visa and international student programs has made the bureacratic process (and concomitant costs) a nightmare to manage. Many applicants simply aren’t eligible any more under the new rules either.
I’m not particularly happy about this, but it’s the reality of our intern hiring landscape. Some of our best former interns have come from abroad, and I’ve already seen some impressive resumes this year from international students. Hopefully one of the non-Toronto-based positions will still appeal to them.
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Air Mozilla: London Web Components Meetup – 20151119 |
The London Web Component Meetup hosts talks about 'An e-commerce journey to using Web Components'.
https://air.mozilla.org/london-web-components-meetup-20151119/
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Air Mozilla: Carto Meetup Paris #4 |
4 `eme meetup Carto Paris, il y aura 3 pr'esentations (Mind-mapping, carto g'eographique et carto de r'eseaux sociaux).
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Monica Chew: Tracking Protection Officially Supported in Firefox 42 |
http://monica-at-mozilla.blogspot.com/2015/11/tracking-protection-officially.html
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Air Mozilla: Web QA Weekly Meeting, 19 Nov 2015 |
This is our weekly gathering of Mozilla'a Web QA team filled with discussion on our current and future projects, ideas, demos, and fun facts.
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Christian Heilmann: Devfest Asia – JSConf Asia closing keynote and Microsoft Meetup |
I am currently on a trip in Singapore, Thailand and Sydney for the next 8 days and today I presented at JSConf Asia and a meetup in the Microsoft offices in Singapore.
The closing keynote of the first day of JSConf Asia covered my worries that we are getting slightly overboard in our affection of JavaScript to solve every issue. It seems we have forgotten just how versatile a language it is and that how we use it depends very much on the environment we run it in. The slides are on SlideShare.
I also recorded a screencast of the keynote and published it on YouTube.
As the audience at the meetup was more mixed, and I was deadly tired, I thought it is a good plan to create a presentation that covers how we can learn JavaScript these days. It explains the use cases of it, resources how to easily run a node and express server and talks about Visual Studio Code and how to clean up old and outdated code. The learning JS meetup slides are also on Slideshare.
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Air Mozilla: Reps weekly, 19 Nov 2015 |
This is a weekly call with some of the Reps council members to discuss all matters Reps, share best practices and invite Reps to share...
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Chris AtLee: MozFest 2015 |
I had the privilege of attending MozFest last week. Overall it was a really great experience. I met lots of really wonderful people, and learned about so many really interesting and inspiring projects.
My biggest takeaway from MozFest was how important it is to provide good APIs and data for your systems. You can't predict how somebody else will be able to make use of your data to create something new and wonderful. But if you're not making your data available in a convenient way, nobody can make use of it at all!
It was a really good reminder for me. We generate a lot of data in Release Engineering, but it's not always exposed in a way that's convenient for other people to make use of.
The rest of this post is a summary of various sessions I attended.
Friday night started with a Science Fair. Lots of really interesting stuff here. Some of the projects that stood out for me were:
On Saturday, the festival started with some keynotes. Surman spoke about how MozFest was a bit chaotic, but this was by design. In a similar way that the web is an open platform that you can use as a platform for building your own ideas, MozFest should be an open platform so you can meet, brainstorm, and work on your ideas. This means it can seem a bit disorganized, but that's a good thing :) You get what you want out of it.
I attended several good sessions on Saturday as well:
Ending online tracking. We discussed various methods currently used to track users, such as cookies and fingerprinting, and what can be done to combat these. I learned, or re-learned, about a few interesting Firefox extensions as a result:
Intro to D3JS. d3js is a JS data visualization library. It's quite powerful, but something I learned is that you're expected to do quite a bit of work up-front to make sure it's showing you the things you want. It's not great as a data exploration library, where you're not sure exactly what the data means, and want to look at it from different points of view. The nvd3 library may be more suitable for first time users.
6 kitchen cases for IOT We discussed the proposed IOT design manifesto briefly, and then split up into small groups to try and design a product, using the principles outlined in the manifesto. Our group was tasked with designing some product that would help connect hospitals with amateur chefs in their local area, to provide meals for patients at the hospital. We ended up designing a "smart cutting board" with a built in display, that would show you your recipes as you prepared them, but also collect data on the frequency of your meal preparations, and what types of foods you were preparing.
Going through the exercise of evaluating the product with each of the design principles was fun. You could be pretty evil going into this and try and collect all customer data :)
How to fight an internet shutdown - we role played how we would react if the internet was suddenly shut down during some political protests. What kind of communications would be effective? What kind of preparation can you have done ahead of time for such an event?
This session was run by Deji from accessnow. It was really eye opening to see how internet shutdowns happen fairly regularly around the world.
Data is beaufitul Introduction to wikidata Wikidata is like Wikipedia, but for data. An open database of...stuff. Anybody can edit and query the database. One of the really interesting features of Wikidata is that localization is kind of built-in as part of the design. Each item in the database is assigned an id (prefixed by "Q"). E.g. Q42 is Douglas Adams. The description for each item is simply a table of locale -> localized description. There's no inherent bias towards English, or any other language. The beauty of this is that you can reference the same piece of data from multiple languages, only having to focus on localizing the various descriptions. You can imagine different translations of the same Wikipedia page right now being slightly inconsistent due to each one having to be updated separately. If they could instead reference the data in Wikidata, then there's only one place to update the data, and all the other places that reference that data would automatically benefit from it.
The query language is quite powerful as well. A simple demonstration was "list all the works of art in the same room in the Louvre as the Mona Lisa."
It really got me thinking about how powerful open data is. How can we in Release Engineering publish our data so others can build new, interesting and useful tools on top of it?
Local web Various options for purely local web / networks were discussed. There are some interesting mesh network options available commotion was demo'ed. These kind of distributions give you file exchange, messaging, email, etc. on a local network that's not necessarily connected to the internet.
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Mozilla Release Management Team: Firefox 43 beta3 to beta4 |
In this beta, many changes to improve the support of GTK3+ for the GNU/Linux users. Besides that, some changes to increase the stability of Fennec.
| Extension | Occurrences |
| cpp | 18 |
| h | 9 |
| c | 3 |
| list | 2 |
| xml | 1 |
| xhtml | 1 |
| txt | 1 |
| svg | 1 |
| json | 1 |
| ini | 1 |
| html | 1 |
| Module | Occurrences |
| dom | 12 |
| widget | 9 |
| layout | 6 |
| xpcom | 3 |
| gfx | 3 |
| toolkit | 2 |
| media | 2 |
| browser | 2 |
List of changesets:
| Wes Kocher | Backed out changeset 9fbc92fa9e4b (Bug 1221855) because I backed out the other half a=backout - 51f0f13e7985 |
| Alessio Placitelli | Bug 1213780 - Fix Telemetry reporting repeated hang annotations for Chrome hangs. r=aklotz a=lizzard - 2fd90a7f326e |
| Alessio Placitelli | Bug 1211411 - Limit the number of thread hang stats reported to Telemetry. r=vladan a=lizzard - 59e6a978773f |
| Alessio Placitelli | Bug 1215540 - Fix Telemetry reporting repeated hang annotations for Thread hangs. r=aklotz a=lizzard - 12762fdf5ab6 |
| Alessio Placitelli | Bug 1219751 - Change the the depth limit of the thread hangs stack to use the 99th percentile. r=gfritzsche a=lizzard - 6cabb1a43af6 |
| Chris H-C | Bug 1198196 - rework EVENTLOOP_UI_LAG_EXP_MS to record all lag. r=vladan a=lizzard - ffc3382d3829 |
| Chris H-C | Bug 1223800 - Accept BHR reports from 50% of beta clients. Up from 1%. r=vladan a=lizzard - aaa5100e2085 |
| Vladan Djeric | Bug 1223800: Fix broken build -- Telemetry on aurora & beta doesn't know about the bug_numbers field yet. a=broken - ec4b13420b71 |
| Bill McCloskey | Bug 1218552 - Fix GTK drag-and-drop coordinate scaling on HiDPI displays. r=karlt a=lizzard - 581b3e8f954f |
| Karl Tomlinson | Bug 1221855 - test Web Audio memory reporting r=erahm, a=test-only - 93d92b8c2b6c |
| Karl Tomlinson | Bug 1221855 - null-check mInputBuffer in SizeOfExcludingThis(). r=padenot, a=lizzard - 294b55e22276 |
| Karl Tomlinson | Bug 1218552 - make GdkPointToDevicePixels() public to fix build. a=lizzard - 844ff2b4f267 |
| L. David Baron | Bug 1222783 - Make nsHTMLFramesetFrame::Reflow set firstTime based on what firstTime means. r=roc approval-mozilla-beta=lizzard - 7947f1e4ca76 |
| Jeff Gilbert | Bug 1209612 - Only QueryString with null if supported. r=jmuizelaar, a=lizzard - d720ce07c464 |
| James Willcox | Bug 1221228 - Work around busted OpenSL causing hangs/reboots on Android. r=padenot, a=sylvestre - 4af91393a8f8 |
| Andreas Pehrson | Bug 1103188 - Keep track of capture stop only in gUM stream listener. r=jib a=lizzard - 1540124e58cd |
| Andreas Pehrson | Bug 1103188 - Keep track of stopped tracks in gUM stream listener. r=jib a=lizzard - e3fad0bd414e |
| Jan-Ivar Bruaroey | Bug 1210852 - do SelectSettings of device capabilities on media thread. r=jib a=lizzard - 1ffe42de58bd |
| Andreas Pehrson | Bug 1070216 - Properly manage lifetime of allocated CaptureDevices. r=jib a=lizzard - 98d9576c7d13 |
| Andreas Pehrson | Bug 1103188 - Always call MediaManager::NotifyFinished/NotifyRemoved on main thread. r=jib a=lizzard - 5ca6857c26e5 |
| Jan Horak | Bug 1216582 - [gtk3] Scrollbar buttons not drawn correctly. r=karlt a=lizzard - 807e612c17ef |
| Bas Schouten | Bug 1216349: Upload the old valid region as well if our texture host changed. r=nical a=lizzard - 94c40ce2d93b |
| Andrew Comminos | Bug 1218008 - Fix progress bar rendering on the Ambiance GTK3 theme. r=karlt a=lizzard - 51585d9e70eb |
| Jean-Yves Avenard | Bug 1220033 - Don't use fuzz arithmetic for calculating internal buffered ranges. r=gerald, a=lizzard - f6fa2e5fb632 |
| Karl Tomlinson | Bug 726483 - remove unnecessary DispatchResized() parameters. r=roc, a=lizzard - 6ceeb10435a8 |
| Karl Tomlinson | Bug 726483 - avoid DispatchResized() during size-allocate. r=roc, a=lizzard - c134a04010a0 |
| Karl Tomlinson | Bug 726483 - keep an extra reference to the window. r=roc, a=lizzard - bc7eea62ab83 |
| Robert Longson | Bug 1222812 - add a null check in case there is no old style. r=dholbert a=lizzard - d35d09b0b24f |
| Nathan Froyd | Bug 1217047 - try harder in IsContractIDRegistered to return a reasonable answer; r=bsmedberg,f=yury a=lizzard - c66289e84c50 |
| Karl Tomlinson | Bug 726483 pass newly allocated runnable to NS_DispatchToCurrentThread() r=roc a=bustage - e4802c73f705 |
| Byron Campen [:bwc] | Bug 1218326: Prevent datachannel operations on closed PeerConnections. r=jesup a=lizzard - d8f0412f38f7 |
http://release.mozilla.org/statistics/43/2015/11/19/fx-43-b3-to-b4.html
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Karl Dubost: App Shell and Service workers |
Google published a very interesting article
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Emma Irwin: The Journey Continues – Mozlando is Coming! |
It’s the most wonderful time of the year! The ‘Mozilla Coincidental Work Week’ brings everyone at Mozilla together in the same city, at the same time for the opportunity of collaboration – this time in Orlando Florida (Dec 7 – 11) !
‘Mozlando’ is the next stop on our Participation Cohort’s journey – a perfect environment for goal-setting focused on building high impact participation opportunities with product teams. Truly – a beautiful opportunity to invest in, and with each other.
Over 100 volunteers will have the opportunity to work directly with teams helping design and strengthen goals which in many (and most) cases includes Participation. For those invited by the Participation Team, we will of course, be dedicating ourselves to that focus.
Photo from Photo CC By 2.0 Mozfest
We have three distinct volunteer groups attending Orlando:
We will reach out with offers for 1:1 coaching for all in groups 1 & 2. And for the subset of the 3rd group, we will reserve blocks of time should they or their team identify Participation connections
The coaching this time around even more important recognizing that connecting volunteers with the project goals is a critical step to bringing sustained strategic advantage to Mozilla . We are asking our cohort to research and consider the following:
CC by-nc-sa 2.0 by Christos Bacharakis
At the heart of everything of course is people, why we’re here, why we care, where we envision we can go individually, and with each other. I’m looking forward to all of it!
For those who think of Orlando as ‘Disney’ and for those who think of Orlando as ‘Space ‘ I give you an image for everyone. ‘Mickey Mouse on Mercury’ CC by 2.0 Nasa Goddard Space Flight Center
Feature Image Credit: Nasa on The Commons
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Chris Cooper: Welcome back, Mihai! |
This is *not* Mihai.I’ve been remiss in (re)introducing our latest hire in release engineering here at Mozilla.
Mihai Tabara is a two-time former intern who joins us again, now in a full-time capacity, after a stint as a release engineer at Hortonworks. He’s in Toronto this week with some other members of our team to sprint on various aspects of release promotion.
After a long hiring drought for releng, it’s great to be able to welcome someone new to the team, and even better to be able to welcome someone back. Welcome, Mihai!
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Air Mozilla: The Joy of Coding - Episode 35 |
mconley livehacks on real Firefox bugs while thinking aloud.
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