The roads I take...

Another week has passed, and here's a short summary of the SeaMonkey/Mozilla-related work I've done in week 47/2007 (November 19 - 25):

• SeaMonkey Releases:
  Started the 1.1.7 release process with candidates and all other required stuff with a target release date of today, but had to pull back and prepare for a respin right when I wanted to push it due to a <canvas> regression. We still hope to release this week.
• Directed Donation Program:
  In collaboration with MoFo, I prepared the SeaMonkey side of the directed donation program recently, pushed it to the public this week, and announced it on my blog and the SeaMonkey website.
• SeaMonkey Website:
  I did rewrite the news parts of the new SeaMonkey Website so that they are driven by a single XML file - this affects the news page, the news section of the main page and the Atom 1.0 feed I added in that process (currently only linked as alternative view to the news page, will link it more publicly soon).
  I also created release notes for 1.1.7 and did some small improvements on other places. And there's a bug report now for changing URLs in SeaMonkey to directly point to the new website.
• SeaMonkey Project Structure:
  Was too busy to drive this forward in that week, will pick it up again soon.
• Smaller SeaMonkey Changes:
  Thanks to Mark Banner, we're now building PalmSync again on trunk, so Palm users on Windows can sync their address books with SeaMonkey trunk.
  Discussions continued about launching 1.1.x branch/release builds of SeaMonkey from read-only installations. Neil has fixed the main issue in 1.1.7, but the issue with launching directly from Mac DMG images is still there, we investigated further how to fix that last case.
  I created a first patch to split error page strings into a generic and a app-specific part, so that SeaMonkey could just override the app-specific file and be able to provide hooks for adding SSL certificate exceptions similarly to Firefox trunk. We found a minor problem, but this looks good.
  After some comments of the first draft, Basil Hashem from Mozilla Corp. created an updated AMO design that should fit SeaMonkey as well as Firefox and the other products well. Due to some discussion around our linking of AMO in the main menu of our new website, some bugs were filed to improve the SeaMonkey AMO experience and getting SeaMonkey users to the right place should also be possible for the next AMO release. I hope this can improve the situation for SeaMonkey Add-Ons users, along with our SeaMonkey 2 rework and whatever improvements they can make to the review process (apparently that's being discussed in the AMO team as a general problem).
• KaiRo.at Bug Bounty Program:
  The Bug Bounty Program I set up from my corporate money is progressing nicely, as Teune van Steeg has now introduced browser notification bars used for blocked extension installs as well as the plugin finder service. By collecting those bounties, Teune has helped us a major step forward in the SeaMonkey 2 user experience. Thanks a lot!
• Source L10n:
  We have 6 localizations in addition to en-US generating nightly builds on trunk, so far this seems to work fine
  I also fixed a security source file to be more friendly to localizers, both for those manually editing them as well as those using tools.
  CVS-based ChatZilla langpacks are stuck a bit, I need to get more input about one unclarity I still have.
• German L10n:
  Some more work to keep up with trunk, but reviews are pending. I started a thread in our newsgroup about how to find a way out of this non-greenness we have most of the time.
• Various Discussions:
  Window icons, Send-mail crash, cert override UI, feed discovery and support, login manager, dictionary licensing, etc.

I start realizing there's a bad thing with releasing as often as we do lately: I spent much more time in the release process for stability, correctness and security updates than working for the future of SeaMonkey. I hope that trend will reverse again soon...

Frank Hecker, Executive Director of the Mozilla Foundation (MoFo), just announced a "directed giving" program that allows you to designate your donation to specific projects in the Mozilla space, one of them being SeaMonkey.

David Boswell, known from mozdev.org and working at MoFo, has worked with the Foundation's board, us and other projects to get this program up and running for a while now, and it's a really great thing for all participants, I think - the Foundation, our projects and also all donators who want to support certain projects.

When you go to the new SeaMonkey donation page (to be linked from main project pages soon), you can make your donation to the Mozilla Foundation be directed specifically to the SeaMonkey project. As Frank states, the plan is to "take note of your choice, and keep track of how much money has been designated for each project. We'll then work with the people responsible for each project and come up with some worthy project-related initiatives for the Mozilla Foundation to fund using those designated donations."
The Donation FAQ has more info on the donation program as a whole.

And even better: The Foundation will triple every donation you make via this program until the end of the year! See Frank's post for more details on that.

We hope there will be a significant amount over time noted to be directed to SeaMonkey, so we can work out interested uses for it with the Foundation.
Thanks to David and Frank for making this great program a reality!

I just received a link to a screen shot of SeaMonkey 2 with customized toolbars (this is work in progress, not in nightlies yet, see bug 394288), so I decided to give you a (probably incomplete) overview of current in-work items for SeaMonkey 2 (in no particular order) - and some we'd need help on.

• As mentioned above, the work on customizable toolbars is done by Philip Chee, and his work is nearing a state that could possibly be included in our development codebase. At first, this will only be available for the browser component, work on other parts will possibly follow later.
• Teune van Steeg is working on notification bars for the browser, which are basically already included in current nightlies, just not used by anything yet. Teune is currently working on making use of this feature, e.g. for installing extensions from blocked sites, missing plugins or popup blocking.
• Another quite active area currently is feed support. Justin Wood is leading that effort, our module owner Neil Rashbrook is helping with some parts there. The first target is to get browser support, mainly for discovery and preview of feeds as well as hooks to subscribe to them. At a later stage, we might even get livemarks support, but probably after getting a feed reader in the mail/news component, which will probably be Justin's next target after initial browser support.
• The preferences migration, targeting to base the SeaMonkey preferences window on the toolkit-style <preferences> family of XUL elements though keeping the familiar look and feel of the suite preferences window, is led by Karsten Düsterloh. The initial work of providing the new window is done already, until migrating all panels is done, we have two menuitems in the browser component, one leading to the new window with the already-migrated panels, one to the legacy window with the not yet migrated ones. That area of migrating pref panes should be a relatively easy one for newcomers to help out.
• Vista users might have noticed that SeaMonkey 1.1.x integration with the new Microsoft OS is not ideal, Frank Wein is working on this among other things when replacing the old "winhooks" code with a new shell service implementation, fitting the style of other toolkit applications. This will also fix an area where localized nightly build show problems.
• Mark Banner is currently working on our migration from wallet to LoginManager for password management, the toughest part of which is that the mail/news code needs to use the new password manager, which is in turn blocked by core LoginManager code not supporting all we need yet. Once Mark has fixed that core code, we should be able to throw another old unmaintained code module away and replace it with cleaner, new code. That will also fix another current case of problems with CVS-based localization.

Some areas still would badly need help though:

• Using the sqlite-based places backend provided by the Mozilla toolkit would probably be a good idea, at least for browser history. After we now can use XUL templates with mozStorage templates, it should not be too hard to get our history UI hooked up with that.
  If that works well, it might even be an interesting idea to use the places bookmarks backend, though without changing the UI we use in the suite for that feature (the backend change would make up the way for extension to try other UI there).
• The download manager should pick up at least the new backend provided by the Mozilla toolkit, which supports goodies like cross-session resuming of downloads. This also will/should fix the probably biggest remaining problem with CVS.based localized builds - and note that there is a KaiRo.at bug bounty to fetch for this work.
• Calendar support is something many people would like from an Internet suite like ours, so making the Lightning extension work on SeaMonkey is another thing we'd really like someone to help out with - and where someone could earn a KaiRo.at bug bounty.
• I think there's no bug filed on it yet, but getting Firefox' session restore ported to SeaMonkey would also be a great feature, esp. as restarting from the extension manager wouldn't make you lose all open web pages.
• Last not least, I once again need to mention the dynamic UA spoof mechanism, which has the largest KaiRo.at bug bounty of all waiting for whoever does the work, and which could help lots of users, multiple browser projects as well as make the web itself a better place.

I may left out some notable areas of current work or some areas we need help, if you feel I have omitted something worth mentioning, please comment on this blog entry!

All in all, I think there's a bunch of interesting stuff happening at the moment, but still some important things to be done before SeaMonkey 2 gets where we want it to be. Thanks for everyone already actively working on the future of the suite (those are all volunteers doing this in their free time!) - and to everyone who wants us to get even better and has some time and work to offer: please help us, either with the items mentioned above or in other ways of getting involved. There's something to do for everyone and we appreciate any help we can get!

Here's a summary of my SeaMonkey/Mozilla-related work items in week 45/2007 (November 5 - 11):

• SeaMonkey Releases:
  SeaMonkey 1.1.6 was released on Monday, I continued uploading contributed builds throughout the week.
• SeaMonkey Website:
  I spent another bunch of time on getting the new Website finalized to be our primary web appearance, which we switched to on late Sunday finally.
• SeaMonkey Project Structure:
  Internal discussions in a core team around the SeaMonkey Council continue, we hope to get something about our restructuring into the public soon.
• Source L10n:
  My SeaMonkey L10n announcement is written, but I still want some signoff by the Mozilla L10n lead. Wait to read more about this soon.
  The L10n review for CVS-based ChatZilla langpacksis a bit unclear to me, I need to discuss that a bit further with Axel.
• German L10n:
  FF3beta1 should really be able to ship in German, and SeaMonkey trunk builds were also kept up-to-date.
• Various Discussions:
  Cert override UI, feed discovery, browser notifications, login manager, storage templates, dictionary licensing, auto-update system, etc.

As you might have seen, the new SeaMonkey website features a "Powered by Mozilla" logo - we are proud to be part of this amazing project and glad to be able to advertise our Mozilla heritage and core (and not some other brand). I still love the old theme that I think is now as accurate as ever for the Mozilla project: "hack - this technology could fall into the right hands"

Here's a summary of my SeaMonkey/Mozilla-related work items in week 44/2007 (October 29 - November 4):

• SeaMonkey Releases:
  Most of this week's work went into creating yet another 1.1.x release, as some layout glitches were found in the bigger list of fixes that went into Gecko 1.8.1.8 and a 1.8.1.9 was issued to fix those. Based on that, MoCo released Firefox 2.0.0.9 and we are releasing SeaMonkey 1.1.6 today to pull in the same fixes.
  I also created release notes for this and the previous 1.1.5 release, taking over from Chris, who unfortunately has less time to donate to the project.
• SeaMonkey Project Structure:
  We spent some time starting internal discussions about possible organizational restructuring in the SeaMonkey project. After more than 3 years of existence of this project, some people's focus has shifted to being more or less active, and we need to think about how to reflect that in our organization. We need to keep the discussions a bit internal until we see this clearer ourselves, but expect to hear more from that soon (nothing bad, just the natural flow of things).
• Source L10n:
  I still haven't made my SeaMonkey L10n announcement, but with the new release out of the way, I hope I can do it soon now.
  I have done some work on CVS-based ChatZilla langpacks, and that even got a review from the ChatZilla side already, I hope to get the L10n review as well soon so we can move forward on this really soon now.
• German L10n:
  We should have Core trunk up-to-date again, right in time that FF3beta1 can ship even in German, and SeaMonkey trunk builds should be available in German again as well - with the usual known problems due to unfinished SeaMonkey2 work.
• Various Discussions:
  Feed discovery, link toolbar, browser notifications, toolbar customization, storage templates, dictionary licensing, auto-update system, etc.

Some people in the SeaMonkey community who were opposed to Firefox for a long time seem to realize that it is indeed a nice browser. I concur with that, but SeaMonkey is still much more than that: We offer a browser, mail and newsgroup client, HTML editor, IRC client and web developer tools all in one application. While Firefox is a good choice for novices who only need a browser, I think SeaMonkey is still the better choice for advanced users, web developers and corporate users, and we're trying to make it fit those audiences even better in the 2.0 version, including some ideas and even more technology we can share with Firefox, but still making our software a distinct, different product with a long heritage and a hopefully even longer future.