The roads I take...

Here's a summary of SeaMonkey/Mozilla-related work I've done in week 08/2011 (February 21 - 27, 2011):

• Mozilla work / Socorro:
  In my work for Mozilla, I finished going though all open Socorro bugs and categorize them (in Bugzilla tags for now), also adding some additional categories where it made sense to create an extra bucket to highlight a certain group of issues or requests.
  As a first spec for implementations of crash-stats features, I started work on an algorithm to identify "explosive" crashes in the system, i.e. ones with a significant increase in volume.
• Search Bar and OpenSearch Engine Manager:
  I didn't come around to actually do any more work on my optional search bar patch but I got the first round of review, as expected with a significant list of things I need to look into before doing another patch.
• Themes:
  Next to some sync-with-trunk work on LCARStrek and EarlyBlue, I also got around to doing some testing of the work-in-progress LCARStrek support for Firefox 4 and get some patches in to start making it usable. Still significantly more work to do there, but it's starting to move in the right direction.
• Various Discussions/Topics:
  SeaMonkey planning, Firefox moving to RC stage, getting used to a desktop touchscreen, deciding to upgrade desktop system and finding components, etc.

I currently find that my usual communications flow (bugmail, newsgroup and planet reading, etc.) and the fixed-time Mozilla work are taking up almost all time I have for doing work, so not very much is left over to care about real SeaMonkey tasks right now. I'll need to see if I can trim down the communication/information part to squeeze out more time - but then, a good part of that is info I need to coordinate what's going on in SeaMonkey, so some part of that counts for this, I guess.
The upside is that the SeaMonkey developer community makes good progress on fixing things without me really looking at its code, and we already have almost 50 fixed bugs for 2.1 Beta 3, even though Beta 2 has just been released a short time ago.

Here's a summary of SeaMonkey/Mozilla-related work I've done in week 07/2011 (February 14 - 20, 2011):

• Build Infrastructure:
  Supported Callek with his finally pushing out the SeaMonkey 2.1 Beta 2 release and InvisibleSmiley with doing some steps for the website on the way towards a 2.0.12 security update.
  I did some review and commenting on the better cleanup on updates patches, which ewong thankfully has been working on.
• Mozilla work / Socorro:
  As I blogged about a few days ago, I started contracting for Mozilla and for this project, I am engaged in finding a roadmap for getting better results out of the crash stats system (Socorro).
  I had a few conversations and phone meetings with the people I'm working with in this project, including an interesting phone conferencce with the Socorro team on finding "duplicate" crash reports in our system.
  In addition, I worked though roughly half of the ~400 open Socorro bugs and tried to categorize them - for now in private Bugzilla tags to not generate a lot of bugmail, but I'll get this into public data when I'm done with all of them and after coordination with the team.
• Search Bar and OpenSearch Engine Manager:
  As I saw that nobody else will pick this one up, I did some updates to my optional search bar patch and did put it up for review, as esp. the included OpenSearch engine manager is something we're really missing in SeaMonkey 2.1 at this moment. I hope I'll be able to address the review comments in time to get this into Beta 3 still, but I have no idea how much time I'll have left for this, as the Socorro work has priority.
• Themes:
  I finished my work to sync up my LCARStrek and EarlyBlue themes with SeaMonkey 2.1 Beta 2 and released fitting versions on the AMO beta channel.
• German L10n:
  I synched up the SeaMonkey L10n with trunk once more.
  On the add-ons site, I cared to submit the versions for 2.1 Beta 2 and 2.0.12 of the German SeaMonkey language pack, so that users should be able to get updates from there.
• Various Discussions/Topics:
  More Fennec testing on the N900, Firefox 4 endgame, Nokia and MeeGo, drumbeat and walled-garden services, local FSFE group meeting, etc.

I found out in the last few days how time constraints, in this case, setting aside the specific amount of time I get paid for my Mozilla contract, enables me to operate more efficiently. That's not to say that I don't allow myself to get sidetracked on occasion, but I very soon get back to doing what I intended to - and of course, I try to get away from any sidetracking whatsoever in the paid time. Reducing chances to get distracted is quite helpful in getting more measurable stuff done, after all, and that works well. Of course, being motivated on a new job always helps increasing efficiency in all areas of life.

Here's a summary of SeaMonkey/Mozilla-related work I've done in week 06/2011 (February 7 - 13, 2011):

• Build Infrastructure:
  Worked more with Callek on release system issues, reviewed the fix for the largest build 1 issue, and did some very in-deep update testing with 2.1 Beta 2 build 2 after we saw some strange results in update verification. This resulted in a bug for cleaning up better in future builds as well as on the large error with partial updates we have this time - which will end up in only shipping complete updates for this Beta.
  I also added the new versions for current 2.1 builds in Socorro (crash-stats).
  In addition, I did some testing on the new graphs server, which led to a couple of bug reports and fixes there.
• Data Manager:
  The work on adding a web storage panel could progress as far as having view and removal for all types of storage where I think I can support those for now. What's still missing is dynamic updates of the view and "forget" support.
  When I stumbled over some support for cleaning Plugin storage (e.g. "Flash cookies") being added to NPAPI, I filed a bug on getting support for it into Data Manager as well.
• Themes:
  I did most of the routine work to make both my LCARStrek and EarlyBlue themes be up to date with 2.1 Beta 2, but some bug fixes still remain to be done.
• Various Discussions/Topics:
  Working around nouveau instabilities by turning acceleration off, more Fennec testing on the N900, fighting wiki spam, almost making the next step in my future official, Firefox 4 endgame, etc.

I sent some time this week recuperating from FOSDEM and getting back in sync with reality. Also, starting Friday, I followed the discussions around the "NoWin deal" following blog posts from me on "Hands off Nokia" (in German) and callings for device vendors to jump onto the MeeGo train right now as a reaction from that (next to amusing myself watching Nokia stock fall to the floor). In between, I did help a lot with Callek getting 2.1 Beta 2 on the road, and we should be very near to its release now - with a load of improvements over 2.1 Beta 1, and all the web-facing beauty that also lies within Firefox 4 Beta 11.
These are surely interesting times!

Here's a summary of SeaMonkey/Mozilla-related work I've done in week 05/2011 (January 31 - February 6, 2011):

• Build Infrastructure:
  Worked with Callek on issues that came up with generating SeaMonkey 2.1 Beta 2 builds as well as some general cleanup/updates in our buildbot code.
  For 2.0.x, I added the new versions in Socorro (crash-stats).
  I also helped some more with investigating and fixing some omni.jar switch fallout, including a Mac menu problem I could fix with an easy patch.
• Data Manager:
  My IDN search fix landed on SeaMonkey in time for 2.1b2.
  I also continued the work on adding a web storage panel. There's a few management functions missing in the global management services for some web storage stuff, for which I cared that bugs are filed, but so far it looks like I can deal with that by some workarounds at least.
• German L10n:
  After Sync landed, I updated German SeaMonkey once again to be in sync (yes!) with this and other current trunk changes in time for Beta 2.
• SeaMonkey L10n:
  Right in time for starting the Beta 2 builds, I went through more sign-off requests, so that this next milestone can ship in 15 languages including US English - and more should be coming for the next, as I still needed to reject a few sign-offs due to things that should not be too hard to fix.
• FOSDEM:
  The FOSDEM conference was taking up a lot of space this week, from creating the slides (might need FF4 or SM 2.1 to view) for my talk about In-tab UI via tarveling to and from Brussels to actually participating in the beer event, the conference, including the Mozilla DevRoom, and the Mozilla dinner and evening activities (I failed to come out last in bowling but we beat the blue team in laser tag!).
  The event was as great as it was in the past, and I especially enjoyed coming into contact with people from other projects (including some KDE people, one of which was a prime example of female FLOSS coders, I hope those will be less of an exception in the future) - and giving a talk that was more mainstream than what I did in the past.
• Various Discussions/Topics:
  Ongoing nouveau driver instabilities, more Fennec testing on the N900, fighting wiki spam, getting SeaMonkey future moving, coming close to making the next step in my future official, Firefox 4 UI and Betas, etc.

I enjoy how things are moving quite a lot now in multiple places, be it on where SeaMonkey is going (I could finally publish the SeaMonkey Council changes, but we're working on even larger things), where I'm going personally (will blog more about that soon), or even the new betas and nearing releases of both Firefox 4 (desktop and mobile) and SeaMonkey 2.1, which both will be great products with really interesting functionality (and all of those will be able to sync data with each other seamlessly)! The more this year progresses, the more interesting it becomes!