The roads I take...

Here's a short summary of Mozilla-related work I've done in weeks 47/2011 (November 21 - 27, 2011):

• Mozilla work / crash-stats:
  Followed the 8.0.1 release that worked around or prevented some crash issues.
  Again provided some feedback on ongoing Socorro work.
  Preliminarily contacted the B2G team about crash reporting.
  Filed bugs for blocking Flash 10.0 and for getting symbols for Android Flash.
  As usual, I also watched new/rising crashes closely and filed bugs for a number of those.
• Themes:
  2.5 versions of EarlyBlue and LCARStrek have been reviewed on AMO now!
  Applied some small fixes to the 2.6 versions I have in development, based on testing and review feedback.
• German L10n:
  Finally applied the central->aurora uplift from last time to the de repo, adding all L10n needed for Aurora in core and SeaMonkey before that.
  Localized all outstanding strings in -central for core and SeaMonkey as well, so that SeaMonkey turned green on all trees.
  Updated DOM Inspector for the German L10n to be in sync with the originals strings.
  Fixed some typos in the German L10n, as well as SeaMonkey addressbook accesskeys once again.
• Various Discussions/Topics:
  L20n patches moving forward, more work on SeaMonkey machines, Fennec native UI project and its fallout, MXR maintenance, ESR plans, getting acquainted with my cool new Nokia N9, etc.

I took a lot of time off work this week, as I'm following US holidays and Thursdays was Thanksgiving. It was good to recharge for a couple of days, given that I started going to bad phrasing again in expressing concerns over some parts of the native UI project for Fennec, but I hope those waters have calmed as much as I myself have now. I'm seeing that the base concerns are shared by others and are seriously being discussed, and that's a good sign. We'll end up with a good offer for Android phone users that represents Mozilla as much as possible given the constraints of the platform, and hopefully will make us credible in the mobile market. If we want complete success on mobile, I still think that B2G is even more compelling, but I think both offers will come out positioned well in their respective space.

I found the following question being raised on German newsgroups, but I guess there's more people interested in this:

Short version:
If you're not using a Mac, switching from 8.0 to 8.0.1 doesn't really help, so we only offer that update for Macs, on all other, 8.0 is just as good, as long as it runs.

Long version:
8.0.1 fixes exactly two things over 8.0:
1) A crash with the newest version of Apple's Java plugin for Mac (the bug is in that new Java version from Apple, but we can work around it with a small patch on our side).
2) On Windows, we're blocking old versions of Roboform that cause 8.0 to crash on startup, we only allow newer versions that don't cause that crash. In case 8.0 is already running, i.e not crashing when starting Firefox, this update doesn't really help anything, and we're avoiding to send people an update when they have no benefit of it, so we don't disturb them. If 8.0 is installed but crashing on startup (because of old Roboform), we don't even get to where an update would be installed. The only thing that helps those people is to manually download 8.0.1 and install it freshly - and actually download a new Roboform version that works with it.
Because of that, 8.0.1 is being offered to all versions (starting with 4.0, incl: 8.0) on Mac OS, but on Windows or Linux only for 4.0-7.0.1, because it doesn't offer any benefit to all the others.

So, in the end, if you're installing a fresh version, 8.0.1 is the right choice, but you don't need to install an update where it's not being offered automatically.

Here's a short summary of Mozilla-related work I've done in weeks 46/2011 (November 14 - 20, 2011):

• Mozilla work / crash-stats:
  Kept following and taking part in discussions on a 8.0.1 chemspill release for crash issues in 8.
  Did some testing of WebGL demos on my tablet and found a crasher there as well as possible crash reporting improvements.
  Tested the upcoming Socorro release on stage and found that the signature summary still needs improvements.
  Provided more feedback on ongoing Socorro work.
  Filed a bug on dealing with development branches in Socorro - this will come too late for current "birch" work, but we should get it in the future.
  Figured out why my gut feeling on crash rates in future build-based Nightly/Aurora reports was correct, now with mathematical proof.
  As usual, I also watched new/rising crashes closely and filed bugs for a number of those.
• SeaMonkey:
  Helped Edmund get commit access.
  Reviewed two build system patches that nobody else wanted to review.
• Themes:
  Uploaded 2.5 versions of EarlyBlue and LCARStrek to AMO, now waiting for reviews.
  Started work on the 2.6 versions of those themes, which match the new betas of SeaMonkey and Firefox, and should have most of that work done already, so I hope that this time I can get reviewed themes out around the actual release of the browser versions.
• Various Discussions/Topics:
  SeaMonkey machine work progressing, more aggressively blocking bad add-ons/plugins/libraries in the future, Fennec native UI project and its fallout, SQLite and places performance, default-compatible add-ons but not themes, WebAPI progress, MPL2 progress, putting tablet to use again, buying and setting up my new Nokia N9 phone, etc.

The story about the Firefox 8.0.1 update that we are sending to Mac users and users of Firefox 4-7 now was one that heavily involved our CrashKill team as it's all based on basically 3 crash problems, 2 of which we could fix on our side (working around an Apple Java problem and blocking old and crashy Roboform versions - we couldn't [yet] fix Windows System Restore to be reliable for Firefox). Therefore, we have been looking into those issues heavily and had tons of email and bug traffic on them with QA and release managers as well as affected developers in the last two weeks. We came away with a number of lessons and the notion that we need to do a lot more about crashes being caused by third-party software, as all of those problems were not actually in our own code. Also, roughly half of all our Firefox crashes right now happen because of third-party software, and we can't let the situation continue that those issues make us look bad. Of course, we value the extensibility that people can combine their offers with ours, but we need to react and pressure them to do updates when their stuff crashes, or else block their software loading in our products and crashing them, as that makes life bad for users.
On a positive note, though, it looks like we fixed something in late October on Nightly that caused Flash hangs and crashes, and right now both Aurora and Nightly show significantly fewer of those issues - will be interesting to see if that holds up when Firefox 10 goes to beta and later release.

Here's a short summary of Mozilla-related work I've done in weeks 45/2011 (November 7 - 13, 2011):

• Mozilla work / crash-stats:
  Updated my custom reports for new versions emerging.
  Tested new Socorro release a bit when it landed, to make sure it works well for us.
  Continued to provide feedback on Socorro UI work happening.
  Attended MozCamp Europe in Berlin and talked about CrashKill there.
  Helped investigating a crash on Firefox 7 connected to updates to 8, which could finally be tracked to people using system restore and that not covering all of our app. I followed through discussions around this and a Mac Java crasher we have been investigating heavily.
  As usual, I also watched new/rising crashes closely and filed bugs for a number of those.
• Various Discussions/Topics:
  SeaMonkey delaying release, Fennec UA strings, getting working tablet again, N9 prices and availability, etc.

This weekend was MozCamp Europe and with it, another great come-together of people from Europe and other regions and a great possibility to be among Mozillians and talk to people from all kinds of different areas of the project, from managers to volunteers. I loved seeing both "old" and "new" faces and talking to both people I've known for quite some time and people I haven't talked to before, and about things from my former and current work to areas I'm interested in but don't work on a lot. The weekend did cost my some physical energy but definitely made me win mental energies.
I hope this strengthened others as well and together we can move the web forward!

Here's a short summary of Mozilla-related work I've done in weeks 44/2011 (October 31 - November 6, 2011):

• Mozilla work / crash-stats:
  Added components reports for "native UI" Fennec builds, also added the possibility to generate 7-day components reports and enabled them for both Fennec nightly as well as the Fennec aurora branch.
  Added an "open" column to the weekly crash bug stats.
  Some more feedback on Socorro UI work.
  Tested some things when the Socorro team tried to push their 2.3.2 release, which they had to revert because of a bug with search.
  As usual, I also watched new/rising crashes closely and filed bugs for a number of those.
• Themes:
  Worked on getting both my LCARStrek and EarlyBlue themes ready for SeaMonkey 2.5 / Firefox 8 releases - this work should be done now and just needs some testing before going up on AMO. Meanwhile, the 2.4 versions have been reviewed and are now public.
• Various Discussions/Topics:
  Getting SeaMonkey machines back up, Callek being off for a few days due to American Northwest snow storms and power outages, "Native UI" for Firefox on Android, DST switches, status of releases, groups for mozillians.org, replacing my faulty tablet, N9 prices and availability, etc.

As my previous contract extension just expired this week and I'm working on a another one with the outlook of an officially more permanent employment situation, I realize that it's been 9 months now since I started working for Mozilla on crash analysis and coordinating between the Socorro team and other parts of the project.
From an experiment on how I would fit in and how the tasks would fit with me, this has grown into a position in which I think I'm contributing a lot to ultimately making Firefox more stable, and it turned out way more interesting than I would have imagined at the beginning. And the upcoming weekend, I'll be presenting about this work at EU MozCamp in Berlin, hoping to inspire the community to help in this area.
It's been an interesting ride in the last months, and I'm looking forward to many more!

Here's a short summary of Mozilla-related work I've done in weeks 43/2011 (October 24 - 30, 2011):

• Mozilla work / crash-stats:
  Improved the per-component crash reports even some more, they should be really usable now, esp. as I included some visual improvements as well. I also filed a bug to get those reports integrated into Socorro at some point.
  Continued to give feedback on UI work for new reports in Socorro that are upcoming.
  Updated numbers on the categorized Socorro bug lists and weeded out resolved bugs from them.
  Joined the discussion of how we should/can use and deal with WinQual crash/hang data.
  As usual, I also watched new/rising crashes closely and filed bugs for a couple of those.
• SeaMonkey build&release:
  Helped Callek slightly with getting the SeaMonkey buildmaster up and running everything again after our VM host failure (mainly did some debugging and fixing on clobberer).
  Also updated the community update server to current AUS2 trunk code so we can handle extended snippet data in the future.
• Add-ons:
  Put some more work into cleanups of my Mandelbrot add-on and implemented a "Back" function in the Location menu. With that, I uploaded it as the final 4.0 version, it's now waiting for reviews.
• German L10n:
  I update DOM Inspector to current trunk, as well as dom/ and suite/ localizations on -central.
• Various Discussions/Topics:
  "Native UI" for Firefox on Android, DST switches, status of releases, groups for mozillians, replacing my faulty tablet, N9 prices and availability, etc.

The landscape of accessing the web has changed a lot in the last years. What we call a "browser" isn't really what that words any more. Nicholas says "a web browser can be characterized as a JavaScript execution environment that happens to have some multimedia capabilities", and I'm trying to refer to Firefox being a "web application runtime" where I can nowadays. While it still happens to support browsing through classic web pages, most of its capabilities, innovations and our work are going into making real applications on the web work as smoothly as possible - and a number of websites people visit are more applications than simple documents nowadays, be it GMail, Facebook, even a number of news sources or other websites that under wraps run complex JavaScript code.
Now there's even stories going around about decoding video completely in JavaScript in a web page! And there's more, with us working on device APIs for the web and ultimately on run device UIs as web apps. This is really a different landscape than in 1998, when Mozilla started.
And even back then, some pioneers in this project had the futuristic vision that application UIs could be done with basically the same technologies as the web - just that HTML itself wasn't ready for it and they created XML-based XUL to do that job, coupled with slightly extended CSS and JS this became a very successful model, as all of the current Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey and other application UIs are running on that right now. Over the years, a lot of the experience we had doing that could be brought back into the CSS, ECMAScript and even HTML standards so that we are close (but not completely there yet) to driving first-class UI on top of the Open Web. A lot has changed for sure, more is to do there.
As I said last week though, I'm sad a lot of that is being abandoned for our Android versions in the future. I hope enough people in the community will maintain and develop a cross-platform markup-based UI so that we sustain the flexibility to have a mobile Firefox on different platforms than Android - and of course, I hope we'll develop standard HTML to fill the gaps to XUL in terms of UI design, so that B2G-based devices in our future will really rock.
With those two measures, we can make open technology on mobile devices have a chance - with Mozilla power heavily involved!