Weekly Status Report, W27/2010

Here's a summary of SeaMonkey/Mozilla-related work I've done in week 27/2010 (July 5 - 11, 2010):

• Releases:
  Wrote release notes, an announcement and finally released SeaMonkey 2.1 Alpha 2 on Wednesday, showing some suite-specific work as well as platform work to testers.
  I also updated the changes page for the upcoming 2.0.6 security update.
• Lightweight Themes / Personas:
  After having investigated that topic some time ago, wondering why it didn't work right away, I worked on lightweight themes (a.k.a. Personas) for SeaMonkey 2.1, and without too much work, I was successful! I hope we can get it into the main code soon, even if I am more of a friend of full themes, I think many people will want to use that lighter system.
• Build System:
  I watched making SeaMonkey compatible with the new XPCOM registration and when builds started succeeding again, I created a patch to update packaging and it helped well with getting us up to speed with packaged tests. We still leave the tree closed until static builds run and we can enable nightlies again.
• Misc changes:
  I ported a small cleanup patch to SeaMonkey, and completed a rename of a tabbrowser variable, both of which are rather small changes, but make us cleaner and better compatible with Firefox.
• Data Manager:
  This week, I could complete work on all those UI updates for data change notifications, ending up having it be feature complete for the first step, and I finally submitted it as version 0.9 to Mozilla Add-Ons, now needing only more testing before it can be declared version 1.0 in the end and make its appearance as a patch for inclusion in SeaMonkey.
• Places:
  While Neil as the reviewer was in Whistler this week, there was no further progress on places bookmarks, the try builds still need further testing and feedback, though.
• German L10n:
  I landed two patches on German help localization thanks to Michael Opitz, this really should help improving the experience for German users in the future.
• Various Discussions:
  SeaMonkey Sync UI, Tabs On Top, SeaMonkey find bar, Firefox 4 Beta 1, etc.

As I had been disinvited to Whistler, I had a lot of time sitting around at home this week with an interestingly quiet Mozilla universe in my view. I had previously said I might spend the time indulging the several bottles of Whiskey I have around in my room, but in the end, the Classic Single Malts are too precious to drown your sorrow in Country Music style - and in the end, the best cure for frustration is working and being constructive - at least for a workaholic like me. Because of that, I used the time for writing up a few patches, and I hope esp. the lightweight themes work is something people will like!