Weekly Status Report, W39/2008

Here's a summary of SeaMonkey/Mozilla-related work I've done in week 39/2008 (September 22 - 28, 2008):

• Automated Tests:
  The long-standing punycode test failure on Mac OS X 10.4 could be worked around for now, followup bug was filed for the failure behind it that should actually be investigated.
• Build System, Organizational Stuff:
  The packages file for Windows is now updated to match reality.
  A number of version number updates were filed for various tools and sites to deal with 2.0a1 and trunk changing to 2.0a2pre.
• SeaMonkey 1.1.x Releases:
  SeaMonkey 1.1.12 could be pushed on Tuesday finally, I'm listening to bugs and posts about JS regressions in Gecko 1.8.1.17, we'll see what the plans for a 1.1.13 can be based on that.
• SeaMonkey 2 Alpha 1:
  I went through the painstaking work of creating Alpha 1 builds late last week, after the last blocker landed and we now have only one, new prefwindow left.
  The candidate builds are up on the FTP servers for smoketesting, we are a bit low on tests right now, but didn't hear of any major problems yet. Once we get good smoketesting coverage on all platforms and have no major issues reported, we'll push the release live - hopefully this week.
  There are no localized builds for this alpha, but we will be providing a few experimental language packs to get a bit more testing of locale switching code and some preliminary testing of a part of the localization content in the hg source L10n repositories.
• German L10n:
  The German L10n could be fixed in time for the cut of 2.0 Alpha 1, so this will be one of the experimental language packs available with the Alpha.
  I found a too long label in add-ons manager during this, I hope we can get that in shape for later releases.
• Theme Work:
  EarlyBlue 2.0 Alpha 1 is now available from AMO in the sandbox (needs login) and I guess it's actually good to have an alpha in sandbox only (for public download, visit my download page). I discovered an issue of check/radio menu items not showing any icon, which I only fixed locally for now, not sure if I'll re-release the theme's alpha for that.
• Various Discussions:
  Toolbar customization, leaks, L10n dashboard, Alpha 1 release notes, Windows icons, installed-chrome.txt removal, etc.

We have builds for Alpha 1 now, and a final release is only waiting on test coverage so that we are confident to ship it to a broader public for even more testing. Of course, this is the first Alpha, so don't expect it to be a smooth ride, though I guess on Vista it might even feel more fitting than 1.1.x already. I'm currently working on release notes and the download page, which will all see modifications in style compared to the 1.x equivalents. We probably go through more iterations of those pages for future preview releases, depending on feedback we get, so we'll arrive at hopefully much improved download and relnote pages for 2.0 final.

I'm really looking forward to feedback to all those new things coming about with Alpha 1 very soon!